Arizona court: Anti-school choice initiative lacks signatures

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(The Center Square) - The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that an initiative to regulate the state’s school choice program appears to lack enough valid signatures to qualify for the Nov. 3 ballot.

The court on Tuesday sent the case back to the trial court to determine whether the petition has the required 255,949 signatures for the Protect Education Act.

The initiative sought to implement a $150,000 family income cap for Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, which could have kicked out over 20,000 students, as well as to provide more oversight of ESAs. In Arizona, ESAs allow families to send their children to an alternate to their neighborhood public school or to home-school them, with the same money that would have been spent by their school district.

In July, the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute filed a lawsuit challenging the Protect Education Act, claiming the initiative lacked sufficient valid signatures.

The legal nonprofit’s lawsuit alleged the signatures were not properly gathered and contained duplicate and missing signatures, as well as signatures from non-registered voters. Protect Education Act submitted 421,451 signatures.

A central part of the state Supreme Court’s ruling concerned how duplicate signatures should be counted.

The court rejected the Protect Education Act committee’s argument that duplicate signatures were improperly counted twice, noting it could not identify any signatures that were counted more than once.

Arizona law requires only one signature be counted, and any duplicates be thrown out, the ruling noted.

The lower court ruling invalidated signatures and adopted a calculation method, as upheld by the state Supreme Court, that left the Protect Education Act short of the valid signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot, subject to final count.

Even though the legal case is not over, Protect Education Act spokesperson Olivia Fierro said in a statement that the ballot initiative would not “qualify for the November ballot.”

“This does not reflect what Arizona voters want. It does not reflect the overwhelming support of educators, parents, and public school advocates across the state who volunteered their time and demanded a voice in reforming a program that abused taxpayer money and pulled funding from their neighborhood public schools,” Fierro said.

The spokesperson called the ruling “a victory for the powerful and a loss for the people.”

“If you are frustrated, turn that frustration into action. Demand transparency, accountability, and investment in Arizona’s public schools,” Fierro added.

On social media, the Arizona Senate Democrats released a statement calling the ruling a “major blow to public education in Arizona.”

“The courts may have kept this measure off the ballot, but they cannot stop the fight for accountability,” it added.

Jenny Clark, the lead plaintiff in the case, said, “On behalf of over 102,000 Arizona ESA families, we are absolutely thrilled at this news.”

“I am so happy for this victory,” she told The Center Square on Tuesday.

Clark, who is the chairman of AZ Loves ESA, said her political action committee has “worked tirelessly since January to stop the out-of-state special interest group that was attempting to destroy school choice in Arizona.”

Clark said she was approached “over a dozen times by signature gatherers” who each lied about what the Protect Education Act was and how it would impact Arizona families.

The ruling is a “huge smack in the face to anti-school choice activist organizations,” Clark told The Center Square.

“Arizona families just want to do what’s best for our kids, and sometimes that looks like the public school and other times that looks like using an empowerment scholarship so our kids can go to a different school environment,” she noted.

Clark said this is the second time anti-school choice proponents have failed to get an initiative on the November ballot.

In 2022, Save Our Schools Arizona attempted to place a referendum on the 2024 November ballot to veto the expansion of the ESA program. However, the group did not gather enough signatures to qualify.

Former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican who signed the 2022 bill making the state’s ESA program universal, said, “Tens of thousands of parents and students across Arizona are breathing a sigh of relief.”

He noted the court’s ruling sends a “clear message to any other anti-parent, anti-school-choice organization: Arizonans overwhelmingly embrace school choice and will continue to do so, regardless of how many millions of dollars these groups waste trying to take it away.”

According to Clark, Arizona parents “aren’t looking back.”

“They’re tired of being trapped in a one-size-fits-all option, and so school choice is now the standard," Clark said. "It's the future."