Background
A registered ballot question committee called Protect Girls Sports in Maine submitted 79,692 signatures in February 2026 in support of an initiated bill titled “An Act to Designate School Sports Participation and Facilities by Sex.” The Secretary of State initially certified 71,033 signatures as valid—enough to surpass the 67,682 required to place the measure before voters. Jane Gilbert and two other challengers filed a Rule 80C petition for review raising twenty-one challenges, including a challenge to over 1,500 signatures gathered by four out-of-state circulators who had not checked the box in their circulator affidavits consenting to personal jurisdiction in Maine.
The Secretary conceded that challenge, and after a remand and evidentiary hearing, a Chief Deputy found that none of the four circulators had timely consented to jurisdiction—one circulator admitted she deliberately left the box unchecked at the time of signing because she did not want to commit to appearing in court during midterm exams, and she executed a corrected affidavit only in May 2026, months after the constitutional deadline for filing the petition. With 1,520 signatures invalidated, the petition fell 532 signatures short of the required threshold. The Secretary adopted the recommended decision, and the Superior Court affirmed. The committee appealed to the Law Court.
The procedural backdrop was shaped by federal litigation. A 2023 consent order in We the People PAC v. Bellows permanently enjoined the Secretary from enforcing Maine’s flat residency requirement for circulators against out-of-state circulators who agreed to submit to Maine jurisdiction, maintained current contact information with the Secretary’s office, and remained responsive to inquiries. The question on appeal was whether the Secretary could enforce a jurisdiction-consent requirement—and a concurrent filing deadline—against circulators not protected by that injunction.
The Court’s Holding
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed unanimously in a per curiam opinion. The court held that the Secretary was not merely authorized but constitutionally obligated to require out-of-state circulators to consent to Maine jurisdiction in their affidavits. Because the Maine Constitution requires petition circulators to be Maine residents, and because the Secretary—as a constitutional officer bound by oath—must enforce that requirement to “the fullest extent reasonably possible,” she was duty-bound to enforce it against circulators not shielded by the federal injunction. Out-of-state circulators who did not consent to jurisdiction fell entirely outside the injunction’s protection, and invalidating their signatures was therefore both authorized and required.
The court further held that the Secretary properly required consent to be given at the time the petition is submitted—not in a post-deadline corrected affidavit. Applying a less exacting constitutional standard (rather than strict scrutiny), the court found that the timing rule does not impose a severe burden on core political speech because affidavits are filed after signatures are collected and do not interfere with circulator-voter communication. The deadline advances the State’s important interest in timely petition review, is nondiscriminatory, and is expressly authorized by statute, which requires circulators to file affidavits “at the time the petition is filed.” Permitting ad hoc, post-deadline corrections would effectively extend the constitutional filing deadline and undermine the Secretary’s ability to perform her review within the statutory thirty-business-day window.
Because the petition fell below the constitutional threshold once those 1,520 signatures were properly invalidated, the court declined to reach the committee’s remaining arguments that other groups of signatures should have been validated—even if the committee prevailed on those points, it could not recover enough signatures to meet the requirement.
Key Takeaways
- A state Secretary of State is constitutionally obligated to enforce a ballot-initiative residency requirement to the maximum extent not precluded by a federal injunction; the injunction’s carve-out for consenting out-of-state circulators means the residency bar applies in full to non-consenting circulators.
- A requirement that petition circulators file jurisdiction-consent affidavits at the time signatures are submitted survives constitutional scrutiny under the less exacting standard because it does not severely burden political speech and advances an important state interest in timely, orderly petition review.
- A post-deadline corrected affidavit cannot cure a circulator’s failure to consent to jurisdiction at the time of filing; allowing such corrections would impermissibly extend the constitutional deadline for initiative petitions.
- The Secretary’s remedy of invalidating all signatures collected by non-compliant circulators is well-established; courts have long upheld wholesale invalidation when a circulator fails to meet statutory or constitutional requirements.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies the interplay between federal injunctions limiting state ballot-initiative residency requirements and the residual enforcement obligations of state election officials. Following We the People PAC v. Bellows, many states face uncertainty about what petition-circulation rules they may still enforce after courts strike down flat residency bans. Maine’s Law Court makes clear that state officials retain—and indeed are obligated to exercise—their full enforcement authority against circulators who do not qualify for federal injunctive protection, and that the jurisdiction-consent mechanism endorsed by multiple federal circuits as a narrowly tailored alternative to residency rules carries real, enforceable consequences.
For campaign and election law practitioners, the ruling also establishes a bright-line rule on timing: circulator affidavits must be compliant when submitted, and a committee cannot cure defective affidavits after the constitutional petition deadline has passed. Committees organizing signature drives that rely on out-of-state circulators must ensure those circulators properly execute and submit all required consent provisions before the petition is filed, or risk losing their entire signature haul from non-compliant circulators.