Judge rejects challenge to Missouri's sports wagering question on the November ballot

ST. LOUIS—Missouri voters will still have the chance to vote in November on whether the state should legalize sports wagering, after a judge rejected a challenge questioning the method the Secretary of State’s office and local election authorities used to certify the measure.

The suit also claimed that some of the signatures on the initiative petitions in the first and fifth congressional districts were invalid.

“Lawsuits seeking to remove an initiative petition from the ballot after it was certified as sufficient by the Secretary are highly disfavored,” Cole County Judge Daniel Green wrote in his opinion issued late Friday afternoon. “The parties have not identified any case in the history of Missouri where a Plaintiff has succeeded in removing an initiative from the ballot through a certification challenge.”

Citing a legal precedent that such challenges must be met with “restraint, trepidation and a healthy suspicion of the partisan who would use the judiciary to prevent the initiative process from taking its course,” Green rejected all counts brought by plaintiffs.




https://spectrumlocalnews.com/mo/st-louis/news/2024/09/06/judge-rejects-sports-betting-challenge