Judge strikes measure targeting unions from Arizona ballot

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Greg Como said it would have been one thing had the measure simply asked voters to bar schools from using public funds to aid labor organizations through, as examples, allowing union information to be distributed on campus and having union dues deducted from employee paychecks. 

But Como noted that Proposition 143, as sent to the ballot, also included a section barring state or local governments from negotiating with any labor organization at all about the terms and conditions of employment. That violated a provision in the Arizona Constitution that prohibits voters being asked to approve two or more unrelated issues on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, he ruled.

There was no immediate comment from GOP legislative leaders who wrote the measure.

But Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who sided with the challengers seeking to remove the measure from the ballot, praised the ruling.

"In their rush to attack public school teachers, Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Steve Montenegro wrote a horrible initiative that would have stripped every public servant from having the right to demand fair treatment and fair wages,'' Mayes said.

The issue traces back to an initiative drive by the Arizona Education Association and a group called Save Our Schools Arizona to put a measure on the November ballot to impose new guardrails on the state's universal education voucher program. Provisions in Proposition 212 range from restrictions on how funds from Empowerment Scholarship Accounts can be spent to limits on vouchers based on parental income.

GOP lawmakers, unhappy with the initiative, crafted the measure aimed at AEA.

When negotiations to scrap both proposals failed, the initiative organizers filed their petitions, and the Republican-controlled Legislature voted on the last day of its 2026 session to refer Prop. 143 to voters.

That drew a lawsuit from public employee unions that argued the wording barring negotiations with labor organizations not only drew them into the dispute but illegally tied the two issues together.

Would have affected all public employee unions 

Attorneys for legislative leaders argued that wasn't the case. They told Como that looking at the entire measure in context showed the only union activities targeted in Prop. 143 were those involving unions that work with public schools — regardless of what the measure actually says.

The judge wasn't buying it.

"This court finds no ambiguity in the phrase 'this state or any political subdivision of this state may not negotiate with a labor organization,' '' he wrote.

Como also said there is no need for him to interpret what "labor organization'' means because the wording of Prop. 143 itself defines it as "any employee representation organization that exists for the purpose of dealing with employers.''

"Far from limiting the term to teachers' unions or school employee associations, the definition does not even mention such organizations,'' he wrote.

The judge said there are other reasons to reject the claim of GOP leaders that everything in Prop. 143 is about schools and nothing more.

Those start, he said, with the fact that the measure refers to the "state," obviously meaning the state of Arizona. The language also covers all "political subdivisions'' of the state.

"It includes any Arizona cities, counties and other local governments,'' Como wrote. "Reading 'state' and 'political subdivision' to mean 'school district' requires impermissibly rewriting the bill, not interpreting it.''

All this comes back to the separate amendment rule of the Arizona Constitution, the judge said. It requires that proposals sent to the ballot "be submitted in such a manner that the electors may vote for and against each proposed amendment separately.''

Como said there's a good reason for that. "It prevents a person from having to vote in favor of an amendment she opposes to support one she agrees with,'' the judge wrote, which would have been precisely the case here. 

Status of separate vouchers initiative

Whether voters will get to decide on the vouchers initiative itself, Prop. 212, is a separate legal question.

Voucher supporters filed a lawsuit contending many of the more than 421,000 signatures submitted for what is formally known as the Protect Education, Accountability Now Act are not valid.

They contend that many signatures were gathered by people who did not comply with laws regulating paid circulators, such as having to first register with the Secretary of State's Office. That would make all the signatures they gathered invalid.

Foes also say some circulators have been convicted of crimes that make them ineligible to circulate initiative petitions, with the same requirement to void the signatures. Their lawyers say that, when those ineligible signatures are stripped from petitions, that leaves the effort short of the 259,949 valid names necessary to get the issue to voters.

Initiative supporters say that they remain confident there are enough valid signatures to put the issue on the ballot.