Statement from Center for Arizona Policy President Peter Gentala on the Trial Court Ruling in Clark v. Fontes
PHOENIX — Based on the trial court’s ruling in Clark v. Fontes and the signature validity rates reported by Arizona’s county recorders, the teachers’ union-backed initiative to dismantle Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program does not have enough valid signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Roughly 245,000 signatures survived review of the 421,451submitted — more than 10,000 short of the 255,949 the law requires.
The backers of this measure spent more than $7 million on a campaign built on skewed data and false claims. But the court found that the petition drive was riddled with duplicate signatures and relied on circulators who were not legally eligible to gather them, including individuals with serious criminal histories. Arizona’s election laws are not technicalities. They exist to protect every voter’s signature, and they apply equally to everyone.
Credit for this moment belongs to the Goldwater Institute, which led the legal challenge, and to our allies at the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and other educational freedom advocates who reviewed petitions line by line. It belongs most of all to the Arizona parents who read the fine print, asked hard questions at the grocery store table, and politely declined to sign.
More than 100,000 Arizona students are learning in the setting their parents chose for them. Those parents are not a special interest. They are families doing the most ordinary and most sacred thing there is — deciding how their own children will be taught. That decision belongs to them, and Center for Arizona Policy will keep defending it in the courts, at the Capitol, and at the ballot box for as long as it takes.
Arizona law sends ballot-qualification disputes to the Arizona Supreme Court on an expedited timeline, and appeals are expected within days — before ballots are printed. Until the justices have ruled, the right posture is steady prayer, steady work, and steady confidence in the process.
We are watching the Arizona Supreme Court closely, and we will have more to say when the court has spoken.