A ballot measure that would place an equal rights amendment and abortion protections in the state constitution will have to wait until 2026, according to the Minnesota Legislature’s most-powerful member.
House Speaker Melissa Hortman said Wednesday she thinks the Legislature will vote this session to place the issue on the ballot for voters to pass judgment on. But that public vote will wait until 2026 rather than appear on this fall’s general election ballot.
The proposed measure has agreement by state ERA backers as well as groups representing abortion rights and transgender rights. Rather than have multiple measures on the ballot, a single amendment will cover all three issues. But those groups, as well as DFL political strategists, have been undecided on when a public vote should be held.
Hortman said Wednesday that the consensus now is that the 2026 ballot, not 2024, is the better path. Constitutional amendments require campaigns, money and volunteers, and there should be more time to prepare such an effort.
“One thing we don’t want to do is go out with a question that gets defeated and have some theoretical future Minnesota Supreme Court use that as an argument that the Minnesota Supreme Court does not protect reproductive freedom,” she said. Currently, the court has found abortion protections in the privacy provisions of the state constitution.
“I don’t want us to do anything as a Legislature to disrupt that bedrock legal principle of law,” she said.
The Brooklyn Park DFLer said she doesn’t support two other proposed constitutional amendments — one to create a statewide sales tax for affordable housing and the other to convene a redistricting commission to redraw state lines after the 2030 Census. She said she wants to see how the billion dollars in housing money appropriated last session is spent before looking at additional money. And she said she isn’t convinced that redistricting commissions produce better results than the long running trend of Supreme Court-drawn lines.
One measure that will be on the 2024 ballot is the renewal of the use of state lottery money to fund the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund.
Sen. Erin Murphy, the St. Paul DFLer named this week to be the majority leader of the Senate, said last week she wants to be cautious about which constitutional amendments are put forward.
“I am incredibly cautious when it comes to which questions we put before the voters to amend our state’s constitution,” she said during a pre-session panel sponsored by the Frederikson & Byron law firm. “The Legislature does need to be very thoughtful about what we are taking to the voters with regards to this founding document, not to use it for political purposes but for its meaning. What does it mean to amend our constitution?”
Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, told the same panel sponsored by the Frederikson & Byron law firm that he thinks the ERA and abortion measures are campaign related.
“We hear about these bills being proposed to change the constitution,” he said. “To take different aspects of political gamesmanship, ERA, abortion and slugging them into one bill and putting it on the ballot, I’d like to believe that’s not something that is going to happen in this state.
“That would be just gamesmanship at that point,” Johnson said. Abortion should be handled in statutes, as it was done last session, not the constitution.” As values, as norms change, it is best to be in the statutes where you can modify and change, But once it gets into the constitution, it’s very difficult to make changes to it.”
Betty Folliard, a cofounder of ERA Minnesota, said a version of a state equal rights amendment has been proposed in the Legislature for 41 years. She said many in the movement have been told repeatedly to wait and that this isn’t the right time. That has led to a feeling that “waiting means never.”
“We’ve been fighting this now for a hundred and one years, and 40 years for the state,” she said. “It’s hard to put the breaks on the activists.”
But activists like her know the decision is the Legislature’s, not theirs.
“The decision is up to the Legislature in its wisdom to determine when to put it on the general election ballot,” Folliard said.
Polling consistently shows majority support for abortion rights and an ERA amendment separately. Last fall, a MinnPost/Embold Research poll asked voters about the issues separately. In that poll, 60% said they would support a ballot measure that guarantees that “equality of rights under the law shall not be abridged … on account of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry, or national origin.”
A separate poll question on abortion — whether voters would support putting abortion rights into the constitution — showed that 54% either strongly or somewhat supported such a measure. Another 34% of respondents either strongly or somewhat opposed that issue.
But Hortman said there are many factors that impact outcome.
“Until you know what kind of forces are allied for and against and what kind of funding they have and you see how it is going in other parts of the country, it is hard to assess,” she said. “You have to look at all that. Polling is less reliable as time goes by, so you look at special elections and actual results.”
Election results around the U.S. suggest the issue has majority support and has been helpful for Democratic candidates and campaigns. That political effect is central to the timing debate: Do Minnesota Democrats need a turnout boost this election when the state House and the president are on the ballot? Or in 2026 when the state House, Senate and governor’s office will be contested?
The state Senate approved ERA language last May in a measure that won bipartisan support. That language stated that “equality under the law shall be abridged or denied … on account of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry or national origin.”
The language now being proposed is more specific about those protections and now includes abortion, stating that the state and local governments cannot discriminate “on account of race, color, national origin, ancestry, disability, or sex, including pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, reproductive freedom, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.” (emphasis added)
To appear on a general election ballot, proposed amendments must receive a majority vote in both the House and Senate and don’t need the governor’s signature. Then, amendments must receive a majority of the votes cast in that election, not just for that measure. That is, a voter who doesn’t make a choice on the amendment essentially registers a no vote.
Peter Callaghan
Peter Callaghan covers state government for MinnPost. Follow him on Twitter @CallaghanPeter or email him at pcallaghan@minnpost.com.
