Politics
Nebraska Supreme Court Upholds Medical Marijuana Ballot Initiatives, Rejecting Legal Challenge
Republican elected officials had sought to invalidate the voter-approved medical cannabis legalization ballot measures.
By Zach Wendling, Nebraska Examiner
The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld Nebraska’s two voter-approved medical cannabis laws following a legal challenge to the 2024 petition effort.
Chief Justice Jeffrey Funke, in a 7-0, 49-page opinion, sided against the lawsuit from former state Sen. John Kuehn of Heartwell, a longtime opponent of medical marijuana, as well as similar arguments from Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen (R) and Attorney General Mike Hilgers (R). The duo had alleged widespread fraud and “notarial malfeasance” in the petition process.
Kuehn’s appeal sought to get around a Lancaster County District Court judge who affirmed that medical cannabis supporters had enough valid signatures to reach voters in 2024.
Kuehn initially sued Evnen. But in the end, the AG’s Office defending Evnen largely joined forces with Kuehn against the Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana campaign. Had the challenge succeeded, the campaign could have sought to rehabilitate challenged signatures in a second trial phase.
“Notaries are, in effect, walking stamps of approval,” Zach Pohlman, state deputy solicitor general, told the high court in December. “They are professional truth tellers. And so when they lie, that presumption of truth…gets pierced, and they become just like every other witness.”
In addition to the civil trial, Hilgers’s office secured misdemeanor convictions against a circulator from Grand Island and a notary public from York. The circulator pleaded guilty, and a jury convicted the notary. The notary is appealing his convictions.
Kuehn, Evnen and Hilgers named other circulators and notaries who they alleged committed wrongdoing. No other charges were filed related to the medical cannabis petitions.
If the justices had reversed, the 2024 ballot sponsors would have needed to rehabilitate enough signatures to show at least 86,499 valid signatures on two petitions apiece for the voter-approved laws—to legalize and regulate the new medicine—to stand, or 172,998 total.
The campaign had 6,822 more signatures validated than needed when Evnen certified the measures in September 2024.
Lancaster County District Judge Susan Strong, who presided over the trial in Lancaster County just days before the 2024 election, ruled that about 1,500 signatures lost a “presumption of validity” across the two petitions, but she said those challenges still fell “well short” of affecting ballot access.
During oral arguments, Chief Justice Jeffrey Funke and Justice Jonathan Papik also appeared skeptical of the need for many petition signers to potentially recertify that they signed the petitions.
“So does that mean they’d call 86,000 signatories to testify that the petition was read to them, they understood what they were signing and they actually signed it?” Funke asked at the time.
“And do that quickly?” Papik added.
Justices Stephanie Stacy and William Cassel had also both hinted the case might be “moot” because of the result of the 2024 election or because signatures had already been verified.
Papik pressed whether arguments from Kuehn and Hilgers’s office had ever been used. Papik was one of two justices who dissented from a 2020 Supreme Court decision that tossed the first petition effort from Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana from the ballot, arguing it was too broad. Supporters divided the legalization and regulation efforts in 2022 and, finally, in 2024.
The voter-created Medical Cannabis Commission has been rewriting its regulations to allow fees for new applications before granting any new licenses. That process is still in the early stages. The next commission meeting is scheduled for September 14.
State lawmakers granted the commission the authority to collect fees during the 2026 legislative session, but the commission had already been working to finalize a previous set of regulations.
The decision comes amid an ongoing criminal investigation into significant allegations of fraud on at least eight different petitions in the 2026 election cycle. That consists of three proposed amendments to the Lincoln City Charter, four statewide ballot measures and one nonpartisan petition bid for Nebraska governor.
Centered in Lancaster County, six out-of-state circulators were arrested who assisted the Lincoln petition effort, and law enforcement is searching for a seventh as of August 19.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R), Evnen and election commissioners for Lancaster and Hall counties are also calling for changes to how signature gathering is operated in Nebraska.
Hilgers has called the 2026 situation a “sad period in Nebraska history,” and he’s repeated his assertion that the medical cannabis campaign was “top to bottom the most corrupt, the worst run, poorly executed, most disrespectful to voters in the State of Nebraska petition I’ve ever seen.”
Campaign supporters continue to stand by their campaign and push for implementation, including in the Legislature, where multiple cannabis-related bills have stalled since 2024, at least one after Hilgers’s intervention.
This story was first published by Nebraska Examiner.
Photo courtesy of Max Pixel.
