GOP lawmakers advance measure allowing anyone to challenge Arizona citizen initiatives
Republican state lawmakers want to give individuals and organizations that oppose Arizona citizen initiatives a chance to challenge those proposed laws in court before the measures appear on ballots.
The resolution introduced by Sen. J.D. Mesnard (R-Chandler) would allow anyone to challenge citizen initiatives in court — before they appear on the ballot — by arguing the proposed law is unconstitutional.
If a judge agrees, the initiative would be thrown off the ballot, even if enough voters signed the petitions for it to qualify.
Mesnard said constitutional legal challenges currently have to be made after a citizen initiative receives a vote. Allowing legal challenges ahead of time will actually protect voters from expensive initiative campaigns that he says are destined to be struck down, Mesnard said.
“This is just trying to prevent that sort of messiness, the expenses, all of that which turns out to be pointless from happening until the courts have weighed in on what matters, which is the constitutionality,” Mesnard said.
But Republican lawmakers need to convince Arizona voters to approve the change.
And legislative Democrats argue the proposal hurts voters by making the initiative process, the public’s chance to bypass state lawmakers, even harder.
“We’re now asking the voters to curtail their own abilities to gather signatures and pass initiatives, and the reason that voters and citizens of our state enter into the citizen initiative process is because this body has been unresponsive and counterproductive to the voters’ desires and their wellbeing,” Sen. Priya Sundareshan said while explaining her vote on the resolution.
She noted that citizen initiatives are often “thwarted” by the Legislature or by court challenges.
At the state Legislature, every bill comes before rules attorneys who alert lawmakers to potentially unconstitutional issues in their bills. Then the lawmakers have the chance to make amendments to adhere to the law.
Somewhat often, lawmakers disregard the warning of their rules attorneys and send forward legislation that’s immediately challenged in court. In the worst-case scenarios, that results in very expensive litigation.
Citizen-led initiatives don’t have rules attorney input, but Mesnard notes that people leading those efforts can go to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, led by longtime Director Mike Braun, for their input.
“The chances of something being unconstitutional on the ballot is higher,” Mesnard said.
The resolution, if approved by voters, would not affect any of the resolutions on the ballot this year.
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