Arizona Supreme Court decision confirms the teachers union-backed, out-of-state-funded measure did not submit the required number of valid signatures. 

PHOENIX — It’s official: the teachers union-backed initiative to restrict Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program will not appear on the November ballot. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled today in Clark v. Fontes, rejecting the last argument standing between the Proposition 212 and the end of the road. 

Prop 212—the teachers union-backed initiative to restrict Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program—needed 255,949 valid signatures. Arizona’s 15 county recorders completed their review and returned a validity rate of just 75.2%. That left the committee’s entire path to the November ballot resting on a single claim: that the trial court’s method of counting signatures subtracted bad signatures twice. 

The Court’s unanimous answer was four words long. “We are not persuaded.” 

The justices affirmed the trial court’s counting method, affirmed the removal of the duplicate signatures, and sent the case back to Judge David McDowell to apply the validity rate and enter the final determination. What remains is arithmetic, not argument—and the arithmetic does not get them to 255,949 valid signatures. 

This is a coalition win, and it belongs to many people. The Goldwater Institute led the legal challenge and carried it through trial and appeal. The Arizona Free Enterprise Club reviewed petition sheets line by line and documented what circulators were telling voters. Love Your School kept doing what it does best—walking alongside families who just want the right setting for their child—while the fight went on around them. Heritage Action mobilized supporters. Important out of state contributions came from the American Federation for Children, along with other educational freedom advocates. AZLovesESAs and parent advocates across the state showed up, spoke up, and refused to let this program be defined by critics relying on false claims and skewed data. And Arizona parents read the fine print at grocery store petition tables and confidently declined to sign. 

To every one of these allies, and to the many more who worked without a byline: thank you. Center for Arizona Policy is grateful to stand with you. 

What the review turned up is worth remembering. A campaign that spent more than $7 million to force this measure onto the ballot turned in tens of thousands of duplicate signatures and hired circulators who were not legally eligible to gather them, including people with alarming criminal convictions. The Arizona Supreme Court’s opinion catalogs circulators who listed commercial mailboxes as their homes and one whose entire pitch to voters, captured on video, was that the measure would help low-income students go to college. It would not have. 

What happens now 

Judge McDowell will enter the final signature determination ahead of the August 20 ballot printing deadline.  

And then the harder work begins 

A courtroom can stop a bad idea. It cannot tell the truth for us. 

For four years, Arizona families have heard about ESAs almost entirely from people who want them gone. Too many parents still do not know the program exists. Too many believe it is only for certain families, when most ESA families are middle-income Arizonans. Too many have been falsely told the program is riddled with fraud, when documented misspending is less than one-tenth of one percent, with receipt-level transparency no other government program in Arizona can match. 

So this is our call to every educational freedom advocate in this state: let’s stop playing defense and start broadcasting the truth far and wide, together. 

That means the same coalition that saved this program now works to make it known; in every district, every church, every neighborhood, every language Arizona speaks. It means making the program easier to navigate for the family that has never heard of it, and easier to use for the family already in it. It means a mother in Yuma with a struggling second-grader and a father in Flagstaff whose son is falling through the cracks both know that Arizona has already made a way for their child. 

The goal was never to protect a program. The goal is a state where every Arizona family, regardless of zip code, income, or ability, can find the setting where their child will actually thrive. 

Parents are not the problem in Arizona education. Parents are the solution. Today’s ruling simply means we get to keep proving it.