The lawsuit seeks to compel Secretary of State Dean Heller to reverse his decision to invalidate a petition drive to get the marijuana-decriminalization initiative on the ballot. Supporters gathered 66,000 signatures in support of the item -- far more than the 51,337 required -- but backers lost a batch of petitions from a key county. Between that and Heller's decision to invalidate a number of the other signatures submitted, the initiative fell 1,249 votes short of qualifying.

The lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana, and the Marijuana Policy Project challenged a state law that requires that initiative backers gather signatures from at least 10 percent of voters in 13 of the state's 17 counties. The lawsuit said the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco recently struck down a similar requirement in Idaho.

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