A Lancaster County District Court judge has dismissed major legal challenges against Nebraska’s two medical cannabis petitions, although the ruling is likely to be appealed.
District Judge Susan Strong, in a 57-page order Tuesday afternoon, said the “case was about numbers.” However, the lawsuit brought by John Kuehn, a former Republican state senator and former State Board of Health member, and aided by Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen (R) and the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office fell “well short” of invalidating enough petition signatures secured for ballot access by this summer, Strong concluded.
The Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana campaign had two measures on the ballot, one to legalize medical cannabis and the other to regulate it. The campaign needed 86,499 valid signatures on each petition.
When Evnen certified the measures for the November ballot, he said they both exceeded that number by almost 3,500.
Strong ruled Tuesday that the “presumption of validity” was lost for 711 signatures on the legalization petition and 826 on the regulatory petition.
“In a record of this size, it is likely, perhaps inevitable, that the Court has made some mathematical errors,” Strong wrote. “It is also possible that the Court missed a few petitions that should lose their presumption of validity under this Court’s reasoning.”
Strong cautioned that the judgment wasn’t based on the inclusion or exclusion of a few petitions and that, either way, Evnen and Kuehn “would still fall short” of challenged signatures.
Hellbound and Down 