It's been said before, but it's good to know a court is hearing it directly: Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey had no authority to demand that the state auditor's office purposefully inflate — by tens of billions of dollars — its official estimate of what an abortion-rights constitutional amendment would cost the state.

That damning assertion from state Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick, a fellow Republican, is in a court brief in litigation playing out in Cole County — and it reveals much about the tactics Bailey and others have resorted to in their determination to deny Missouri voters the right to weigh in on the state's draconian abortion ban. One attorney's description of Bailey's position as being "banana-grams" is perhaps giving it too much credit. The court should push Bailey back into his own lane.

Upon last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade and returning the issue of abortion to the states, a Missouri law took effect that prohibits virtually all abortions from the moment of conception, even in cases of rape or incest, except in medical emergencies. Though Missouri is a conservative state, that policy is likely more extreme than what a majority of Missourians want, according to polling.

On myriad other issues, Missouri voters have used ballot referendums to go around lawmakers who refuse to carry out the will of the people. That's what pro-choice advocates are trying to do now: get a constitutional amendment on the state ballot to let voters restore abortion rights in Missouri.

When advocates seek to put a referendum on the ballot, the state auditor's office must come up with an estimate of what fiscal costs the proposal would create for the state. The attorney general must certify that estimate — though that part is historically just pro forma. Fiscal issues are by definition the realm of the state auditor, not the attorney general.

But don't try telling that to Bailey. When Fitzpatrick's auditors determined that passage of an abortion-rights amendment might cost government a relative pittance of $51,000 annually, Bailey refused to certify it, insisting the figure should be changed to claim the cost would be in the tens of billions. His rationale is the bizarre notion that such an amendment would risk loss of federal Medicaid health insurance funds for Missouri, which the relevant state departments say just isn't the case.

Even more bizarrely, Bailey wants the auditor's office to declare the amendment will cost the state billions more in lost revenue because future taxpayers wouldn't be born. (Did it even occur to him that the same argument could be made regarding, say, condoms?)

In its Cole County lawsuit, the ACLU seeks to force Bailey and others to stop this obstructionism and let the referendum effort proceed. Fitzpatrick, like Bailey, is an anti-abortion conservative, but unlike Bailey, he has clearly put his obligation to the law ahead of that ideological mission. Fitzpatrick's general counsel this week filed a brief arguing there is "an absolute absence of authority to conclude the attorney general is permitted to send the auditor's fiscal note summary back for revision because he disagrees with the auditor's estimated cost or savings of the measure."

In other words, your honor: It's banana-grams.

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