Public school advocates are suing over descriptions of two separate ballot measures related to Arizona’s school voucher program approved last week by state lawmakers.
The advocates are behind a ballot measure called the Protect Education Act, which would restrict the state’s universal school voucher program, called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.
Republican legislators who want to protect vouchers put their own measure on the ballot, which would act as a poison pill and negate the guardrail measure if voters pass both.
Lawmakers are tasked with approving “impartial” descriptions of measures that appear in a publicity pamphlet, which the state puts out every election cycle for voters.
On July 8, a panel of state lawmakers passed ballot descriptions on party lines. Democratic legislators oppose the analysis of the Protect Education Act, and every other analysis the GOP lawmakers pushed through on party lines in a committee hearing last week.
Those backing the Protect Education Act say Republican lawmakers adopted biased language intended to discourage Arizonans from voting in favor of voucher restrictions.
They also argue in their complaint the lawmakers’ description of their own poison pill measure “misleads by omission” by not clearly explaining the nullification clause.
“The Council’s analysis of the Protect Education Act errs in the opposite direction. It affirmatively misrepresents the Initiative’s provisions and adds extra-textual language designed to cast the measure in the worst possible light,” the legal challenge to the ballot descriptions of both those measures states.
The union argues using terms like “excluding students from eligibility” to describe income caps on families is biased language.
In last week’s hearing, Rep. Nancy Gutierrez (D-Tucson) called the analysis “inflammatory,” noting it includes terms that aren’t included in the text of the proposal.
“It just speaks to it being advocacy language, and I am opposed to it. I think it is just way beneath this committee to have this,” Gutierrez told her colleagues.
The lawsuit asks a judge to block ballots from including the GOP lawmakers’ favored descriptions.
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