GOP referral that would prevent school voucher regulations blocked from the ballot

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The GOP referral was a direct response to a ballot initiative crafted by public education advocates that would have overhauled the voucher system. Proposition 212, or the Protect Education Act, would have added an income cap to the program, established penalties for voucher misuse and set educational and safety requirements for schools that accept vouchers. Part of Prop. 212 would have clawed back voucher money in scholarship accounts, including from military families. If voters had approved of Prop. 145, the public-education backed Prop. 212 would have been nullified even if it had passed, because the prohibitions in Prop. 145 applied to all laws and ballot measures adopted after Nov. 1, 2026. 

But voters won’t get a chance to consider whether the $1 billion school voucher program should be more strictly regulated. That’s because on Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that Prop. 212 didn’t gather enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. 

Also on Tuesday, the high court ordered that Prop. 145 be left off of the November ballot, agreeing with a lower court’s July decision that determined it was unconstitutional and foiling GOP hopes of preemptively protecting the voucher program from future threats. Republicans had petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court to reverse the July ruling and ensure that their ballot measure could still be put before voters, but the justices weren’t impressed. 

Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer, writing on behalf of the six justices who weighed in on the case, pointed out that Prop. 145’s two main provisions aren’t related enough to satisfy the Arizona Constitution’s separate amendment requirement. Justice Kathryn King didn’t participate in the decision. 

The separate amendment requirement prohibits ballot measures from making multiple, disparate changes that could force voters to support a proposal despite reservations about some of its content. Timmer noted that barring the state from taking away money from the children of military families who qualify for vouchers isn’t connected enough to the provision that declares any state law or ballot initiative void if it impacts military family voucher recipients to warrant both provisions being wrapped up in one proposal. 

That’s because the main provisions in Prop. 145 change different parts of the Arizona Constitution. One adds an entirely new amendment to the state constitution protecting military family voucher accounts and the other amends the existing rules that limit the legislature’s influence over citizen initiatives, creating an exception that allows the legislature to override voter approved ballot measures when school vouchers are in play. 

“(Prop. 145) does not confine its effects to a single constitutional provision,” Timmer wrote. 

Timmer added that, on top of failing to be sufficiently connected, the provisions also have significantly different impacts. While one part of the ballot referral simply protects military family voucher accounts, the other goes far beyond that, nullifying laws that affect any voucher accounts, even those that don’t belong to the children of military families. That, Timmer wrote, is exactly the kind of broad and disconnected type of ballot measure the state Constitution’s separate amendment rule was created to prevent. 

“The provisions do not share a logical relationship or derive meaning and effect from each other,” she wrote. “This is the type of measure the separate amendment rule is designed to prohibit.”

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