Why Save Our Schools Arizona is suing to stop the GOP’s trickery aimed at blocking voucher reforms

Arizona voters, the Republican-led state legislature is so scared of you having a voice in how your tax dollars are spent that they will resort to trickery, deceit, and downright unconstitutional behavior in order to void your vote on the Protect Education Act — a citizen’s initiative to reform Arizona’s $1 billion private school voucher program. 

Judging by the more than 420,000 signatures turned in earlier this month by parents, educators, and community members to qualify the Protect Education Act for the November ballot, Arizona voters very much want to pass these commonsense reforms. 

And that’s why Republican lawmakers last month passed HCR2048, a shamelessly deceitful attempt to use military families to silence the will of Arizona voters and invalidate commonsense reforms to the $1 billion taxpayer-funded private school voucher program. 

This Trojan Horse ballot referral was forced through on the last day of session in the dead of night through political trickery. On its face, HCR2048 is crafted to appear to protect vouchers (what they call “scholarships”) for military families. What it truly seeks to do is invalidate the Protect Education Act — even if and when Arizona voters overwhelmingly pass the act’s voucher reforms on the ballot this November. 

That’s why lawyers representing the Protect Education Act and Save Our Schools Arizona filed a legal challenge of HCR2048 that will be heard this week in Maricopa County Superior Court. The suit argues that HCR2048 seeks to void not only the recouping of ESA dollars for military families, but all other provisions of the Protect Education Act — even when voters pass the Act in November. 

While voters are ready to stop the purchase of luxury items like jewelry and vacations with tax-funded ESA vouchers, enhance child safety in the program, and add an income cap to ensure better use of taxpayer dollars, HCR2048 intends to make all of those reforms impossible. As the complaint states, “Using military families as a ruse, HCR2048’s purpose and effect are to both void the pending citizens’ initiative to reform Arizona’s (Empowerment Scholarship Account) program — the Protect Education Act — and to impede future reform of the ESA program by the people or by the Legislature.” 

The complaint argues HCR2048 is unconstitutional because it violates the separate amendment rule in the Arizona Constitution, which clearly says voters must be offered a “separate, independent vote” for any proposed constitutional amendments. The framers of the Arizona Constitution created the separate amendment rule to stop “logrolling,” which the complaint defines as “tying a controversial measure to a popular one to drag it across the finish line on borrowed support.” By tying two questions (whether voters want to protect ESA dollars for military families and whether voters want to void a voter-protected initiative) into one, the legislature runs afoul of this law. 

Further, HCR2048 would “strip Arizona’s courts of their historic power to sever the offending provision while saving the rest,” an unprecedented move that no judge should allow.

Finally, the complaint argues that the title of HCR2048 fails to give voters any understanding of the deceitful trickery at play, even though the Constitution requires that the title must clearly state its subjects. The complaint states, “HCR2048 flouts that requirement. Its title speaks only of ‘education scholarships’ and styles itself the ‘Military Families College Savings and Scholarship Protection Act’ — nowhere disclosing that it would void a future voter-approved ballot initiative.” 

In its efforts to stop the will of Arizona voters — which already rejected universal vouchers by a 2-1 margin in 2018 — the politicians at the state legislature have overplayed their hand. 

This egregious attempt to roll voters must not stand, so we’ll see the Legislature in court.