Arizona courts knock multiple measures off November ballot
PHOENIX — Arizona’s November ballot got shorter Tuesday after the state Supreme Court blocked two school-voucher measures from going before voters, continuing a summer in which courts have removed several proposed constitutional amendments and initiatives from the ballot.
The Arizona Supreme Court unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that Proposition 145, a legislatively referred constitutional amendment involving Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, violated the Arizona Constitution’s requirement that separate constitutional amendments be submitted to voters separately.
The measure, referred to the ballot by Republican lawmakers as HCR 2048, would have prohibited the state from taking money from a scholarship account belonging to the child of a military family.
But the proposal also included a broader provision that would have invalidated any law or voter-approved measure adopted after Nov. 1, 2026 if any portion conflicted with that protection.
The Supreme Court concluded those provisions were not sufficiently related to constitute a single constitutional amendment. The court said the military-family protection and the broader provision invalidating conflicting laws differed both in subject and legal effect.
The ruling affirmed a July decision by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge removing the measure from the ballot.
Prop. 145 had also been closely linked to another voucher proposal — Proposition 212, known as the Protect Education Act.
That citizen initiative sought to impose new restrictions on Arizona’s universal ESA program, including an income cap for some participants, additional rules governing allowable purchases and new requirements for schools accepting voucher funds. Supporters submitted nearly 420,000 signatures in July.
But in a separate decision Tuesday, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that disqualified enough petition signatures to leave Prop. 212 short of the number needed to qualify for the ballot.
Supporters argued that the method used by the courts effectively double-counted some invalid signatures when calculating the initiative’s validity rate. Opponents, represented in part by the Goldwater Institute, argued that the disputed signatures were properly excluded under Arizona law. The Supreme Court sided with the challengers, ending the measure’s path to the November ballot.
The rulings mean voters will see neither side of what had developed into a major fight over the future of Arizona’s ESA program.
They are not the first measures struck from the ballot this summer.
In July, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Greg Como removed Proposition 143, another legislative referral, after finding that it also violated the Constitution’s “Separate Amendment Rule.”
Prop. 143 would have restricted the use of public resources for labor-union activities in school districts while also prohibiting the state and local governments from entering certain collective-bargaining agreements with public-sector unions.
Como concluded that those provisions represented distinct policy changes that could not constitutionally be presented to voters as a single take-it-or-leave-it question.
The court rulings have not affected every challenged legislative referral.
Also Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court allowed Proposition 144, a sweeping election-law proposal, to remain on the ballot. Critics had argued that its provisions — including voter identification requirements, restrictions involving foreign spending in elections and rules governing ballot tabulation — constituted separate constitutional amendments.
A majority of the court disagreed, finding that the provisions were sufficiently connected because they all addressed the conduct of elections.
The series of decisions highlights an increasingly important stage of Arizona’s ballot-measure process: litigation over whether proposals meet constitutional and statutory requirements before voters ever get a chance to decide them.
With the state facing an Aug. 20 ballot-printing deadline, the Supreme Court has been resolving election cases on an expedited schedule. In one filing this month, state attorneys noted that 10 ballot-related cases had reached the court since July 24.