Expanded legalized gambling will appear on the November ballot in Nebraska, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The court’s 4-3 ruling threw out an August ruling by Secretary of State Bob Evnen (R), which kept three gambling initiatives off the ballot, the Sioux City Journal reported.
Ho-Chunk Inc., the economic development arm of Nebraska’s Winnebago Tribe, spent millions lobbying for the initiative. The three measures include one that would amend the state constitution to allow casino gambling and two more creating taxes and regulations around it.
Evnen blocked the gambling initiative on the grounds that they could potentially confuse voters.
"The petitions do not contain a single issue. They are required to contain a single issue," Evnen said in August, according to an Omaha-area ABC affiliate. "I consider the fact that isn't disclosed to be misleading. Voters would be confused.”
Evnen also cited the fact that one petition sets aside money for property tax relief.
"That has no connection to the expansion of gambling and the fact that you divided it into another initiative doesn't save it," he said.
Separately, the court voted to keep a medical marijuana initiative off the November ballot, with two justices dissenting, according to a local NBC affiliate.
"If voters are to intelligently adopt a State policy with regard to medicinal cannabis use, they must first be allowed to decide that issue alone, unencumbered by other subjects," the court wrote. "As proposed, the NMCCA contains more than one subject — by our count, it contains at least eight subjects."