MO Supreme Court Hears "Right-to-Farm" Ballot Language Challenge

Can the Court Legally Consider it?

On February 25, the Missouri Supreme Court heard a challenge to the "Right-to-Farm" amendment (Amendment 1 on the August 2014 ballot). Missouri voters passed the amendment by a slim margin. 50.12 percent of voters said "yes," while 49.88 percent of voters said "no" to the amendment. There was an immediate call for a recount but the recount only confirmed Amendment 1's passage.

The challenge, brought forward by Wes Shoemyer, et al., (Shoemyer) pertains to whether the ballot language was deceptive or confusing to the average voter.

There are questions as to whether the court can legally even consider the case. The questions appear to revolve around whether Shoemyer has any standing to bring suit challenging the language post election. At the minute mark of 7:30 minutes in, the MP3 records the Court asking the attorney for Shoemyer, "Counsel, if you're concerned that voters have been misled by this language, why wasn't suit brought prior to the election because there's no question of insufficient time to do so here?" The attorney for Shoemyer responded, "You are absolutely correct, your honor...I think that's exactly right, I think there is a huge issue here with regard to whether or not we should have challenged it within the first ten days." He then points out, "You are talking about Missouri citizens who are not lawyers, they're not linguists, they're not semanticists. They don't get a copy of this on the day that it's certified, although they probably can download it, probably, from the Missouri State Legislature's Web site. You're essentially asking people who may have no training in the law to look at this and determine whether or not it's deceptive, go find a lawyer who can, within ten days, get a case on file. How many of those are out there and who have expertise in this area? That's a pretty narrow window."

Shoemyer wants a three pronged remedy. They want the election to be set aside. They want the ballot language to be rewritten, and they want to have another election with the new ballot language.

The "contestee" in the case, Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kandor, et al., in their response brief claims, "Shoemyer had a year to litigate the Right-to-Farm ballot title before the election," going on to claim that "he did not, preferring instead to sit on his hands."

Governor Jay Nixon announced about 75 days before the August 5, 2014 election that he would put Amendment 1 on the ballot.