Public education advocates filed a legal challenge on Wednesday against a Republican-backed ballot measure. The GOP measure would void efforts to put guardrails on the state’s universal private school voucher program.
The state’s teachers union — called the Arizona Education Association — and other public education advocates are backing a separate ballot measure that would put an income cap on voucher eligibility and add other restrictions.
They’re calling it the Protect Education Act.
GOP lawmakers added a competing measure to the ballot, which would void the other measure if voters pass both.
The Republican measure is labeled “military families, scholarship accounts” and is ostensibly about ensuring the state doesn’t confiscate education money from military families.
However, in a subsection of the proposal it states if any other measure is approved by voters in the same election, that other measure is void.
The teachers union argued in their complaint that the GOP measure violates a "separate amendment” rule in the state Constitution and uses a misleading title, which claims to be specifically about protecting education for military families and doesn’t alert voters to the part of the legislation that would nullify the union’s measure.
“By cloaking this sweeping consequence in the borrowed goodwill of a ‘Military Families… Protection Act,’ HCR 2048 inflicts precisely the concealment the Constitution’s title requirement forbids — denying notice to both the legislators who voted on the measure and the voters who will vote on it in November,” the challenge states.
Furthermore, the union argues that a truly well-informed voting population wouldn't logically pass both ballot measures, since they are “irreconcilable.”
“HCR 2048 can therefore accomplish its true purpose only by concealment and logrolling,” the complaint states.
Logrolling is the illegal practice of bundling unrelated pieces of legislation into a single measure, forcing voters to take multiple actions in a single vote.
The challenge was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court.
The plaintiffs are asking for the GOP measure to be permanently blocked from the November ballot.
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Voters will get the chance to add guardrails to the state’s universal private school voucher program in November — probably. -
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Attorney General Kris Mayes is dropping her legal fight to require parents of children who use vouchers to document how each of their purchases are truly educational.
