The city of Colorado Springs can go ahead with a question to repeal the recent recreational marijuana ballot measure, an El Paso County District Court judge ruled Wednesday afternoon. However, the city must change the wording of what’s on the ballot to avoid confusing voters.

District Court Judge Hilary Gurney granted an emergency stay request filed by the city to hold off on the injunction she had issued Monday pending an appeal attempt to the Colorado Supreme Court.

With the injunction lifted, Gurney proceeded to rule that the city’s original repeal question could be misleading or confusing to voters. The judge ordered Colorado Springs to use an alternate ballot title proposed by the plaintiffs who had sued the city, and she ordered that the two sides agree on a method to alert voters of the continuing legal status of the case.

Wednesday’s decision was the latest turn in months of opposition by the Colorado Springs City Council to Question 300, a voter-initiated ballot measure to begin allowing recreational marijuana licenses and sales in the city limits. In November city voters approved the question with 54.7% of votes cast in support.

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On Jan. 28, the City Council voted 7-2 to place a question on the April 1 municipal ballot asking voters to repeal and reverse the recreational vote. Council members said that voters may have been confused by the phrasing of the question on the ballot, which included the legalization of sales as part of a longer list of regulations and licensing requirements for recreational sellers.

A lawsuit challenging the repeal was filed by two city residents, medical marijuana business owner Renze Waddington and veterans group director Adam Gillard. The two claimed that the state Constitution only allowed votes that would prohibit recreational marijuana sales during a general election in even years and that the proposed ballot question violated the city code and state laws about clear ballot titles.

Gurney issued the injunction Monday over the constitutionality of the timing of the ballot question and did not rule on the merits of the complaint about the ballot title until Wednesday.

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The court order Wednesday found that the ballot language approved by the City Council did not clearly identify which of the two measures on the November ballot voters were being asked to repeal. The City Council had placed a competing question on the November ballot asking voters to change the city charter to ban recreational marijuana sales. The charter ban question was narrowly voted down.

To reduce the “potential for confusion by voters” over the issue in April, Gurney ordered that the city place the alternate title proposed by the plaintiffs on the ballot instead.

The new version of the ballot question would include mentions that sales licenses were limited to the current number of existing medical marijuana businesses in Colorado Springs, that marijuana sales would be prohibited to anyone under the age of 21, and that the sales taxes from recreational marijuana would help fund public safety and mental health services in the city.

Judge Gurney ordered that the city and plaintiffs “agree upon a proposed mechanism for alerting the electorate of the legal status of this ballot question.” The ruling said voters could be potentially disenfranchised if they did not have information about the pending legal decision on the timing of the election.

Lawsuit filed to keep recreational marijuana repeal off Colorado Springs’ April ballot

Colorado Springs filed an emergency petition with the state Supreme Court late Tuesday night asking it to take on the case. In their petition, city attorneys argued that the repeal would remove all ordinances about recreational marijuana from the city code and leave the sales “neither permitted nor prohibited.” The city attorneys asked for an expedited decision to give voters the option of repealing the measure before the city began issuing retail licenses in mid-April.

In a statement late Wednesday, city spokesperson Vanessa Zink said the new court order came after the city’s final deadline of 2 p.m. Wednesday to print the ballots for military and overseas voters. The city said they would no longer be able to mail the roughly 4,800 impacted ballots to military and overseas citizens on Friday as required by city code.

“It is important for them to have the same clarity and content on their ballot. The City is working as quickly as possible within the court system to resolve this issue,” Zink said in the statement.

The rest of the ballots will be mailed to city voters March 7.

This story has been updated with additional comments from the city of Colorado Springs.