High court rejects bid to give voucher-protecting Prop. 145 ruling lasting weight

Filed 1h ago · Via Arizona Mirror · The Buffoon Desk

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Corncob

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Missvain · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The Arizona Supreme Court declined a request from Attorney General Kris Mayes to make binding precedent out of its ruling last month that removed Proposition 145, a GOP-backed voucher measure, from the ballot. The court had unanimously found the measure violated the single-subject rule by pairing military-family voucher protections with a severability clause that would have nullified any future law diminishing that funding, even laws otherwise unrelated to school vouchers.

Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer, who authored last month's ruling, wrote this week that the decision was issued on an expedited schedule without oral argument, and therefore cannot be cited in future ballot-measure disputes. The state's Solicitor General's office had argued the single-subject question was significant enough to warrant lasting weight.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Drafting a clause built to swallow every future law on a subject and then getting told the ruling against it doesn't count for next time is a special kind of consolation prize. The court found the trick, named the trick, and then declined to hand anyone a map for spotting it again. Somewhere a legislative staffer is already photocopying the same severability language with a different noun in it.

Source: Read the original at Arizona Mirror → Scored: Corncob · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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