Judge removes Arizona school voucher 'poison pill' measure from November ballot

Politics

UPDATE: GOP lawmakers appeal after Arizona judge removes 'poison pill' ESA measure from ballot

Camryn Sanchez

Republican lawmakers are appealing a court ruling, seeking to keep a measure on the ballot that would nullify an effort to put restrictions on the state’s school voucher program.

A Maricopa County judge has removed a so-called “poison pill” measure from the general election ballot that critics called a veiled attempt to undermine a competing school voucher reform initiative.

The Republican lawmakers who sent HCR 2048 to the ballot said it would protect military families who receive school voucher dollars from the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, or ESA, program.

The measure would do that by prohibiting the state from confiscating money from any ESA account belonging to qualified children in military families.

But the proposal also includes language that would fully void any future law that could violate those protections.

Critics, including Democratic lawmakers and public school advocates, argued Republicans included that section to invalidate a separate school voucher reform initiative headed for the November ballot that would create new rules for the ESA program.

"Again, 2048 was never about protecting scholarships, but about spreading disinformation about the Protect Education Act and ultimately trying to invalidate it simply because they don’t like it - even though Protect Ed specifically protects eligibility for Empowerment Scholarships for all military families, regardless of income," Protect Education Accountability Now, the campaign backing the voucher reform measure, said in a statement.

In a lawsuit filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, they argued the broad language used in that “poison pill” section could be used to invalidate parts of the reform initiative that have nothing to do with military families.

“For example, it would void provisions forbidding spending tax-funded ESAs on luxury items like jewelry, vacations, and home improvements-not just for military families, but for the entire ESA program,” according to the lawsuit.

Judge Joseph Kreamer sided with those critics, finding HCR 2048 violated a state constitutional rule requiring ballot measures to stick to a single subject.

Kreamer concluded the different parts of the proposed law were broadly related — both sections generally deal with school voucher dollars and military families — but that second “poison pill” provision also had broader implications that would bar lawmakers and voters from passing certain types of legislation in the future and require courts to enforce that prohibition.

“This is one of the rare cases where the relationship between two challenged provisions can be fairly characterized as facial, but little more than that,” Kreamer wrote.

He called it “unlike any severability provision that has ever been enacted in Arizona, because instead of applying only to the bill being proposed, it would apply to invalidate future legislation.”

And he found that the first part of the law could accomplish the goal of protecting school voucher dollars for military families all on its own.

“Subsection B is thus completely superfluous to the goal of protecting military family scholarship accounts,” Kreamer wrote.

Republican lawmakers plan to appeal the ruling.

“Definitely,” said Andrew Wilder, a spokesman for House Speaker Steve Montenegro (R-Goodyear), who intervened in the case alongside Senate President Warren Petersen.

The Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank, also intervened in the case on behalf of two military veterans, state Rep. Nick Kupper and Bobby Figueroa. It plans to appeal the case to the Arizona Supreme Court “as soon as possible,” a spokesman said.