NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Federal appeals judges on Wednesday questioned two previous, conflicting court rulings on a successful 2014 constitutional amendment allowing tougher abortion restrictions in Tennessee.
The Tennessean reports that judges with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati expressed concern about a Tennessee court’s ruling backing the method state officials used to count votes on the amendment, which passed with 53 percent of the vote.
But as they heard oral arguments from both sides Wednesday, the judges also questioned a recount ordered by a U.S. District judge. The recount is on hold pending the appeal.
In his April 2016 ruling, U.S. District Judge Kevin Sharp sided with eight voters who are pro-abortion rights and sued the state. Sharp called Tennessee’s vote-counting on Amendment 1 unconstitutional and fundamentally unfair. He wrote that the state violated due process and equal-protection rights because people who voted for the amendment and didn’t vote for governor effectively lowered the bar for the amendment’s passage, a strategy advocated by anti-abortion campaigns. In Tennessee, a constitutional amendment must get votes from “a majority of all the citizens of the state voting for governor” in order to pass.
Attorneys for the state say they followed longstanding practice of counting amendment votes. A state court, which Tennessee officials argue is the court system that should interpret the state constitution, ruled in favor of the state’s vote-counting method.