Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
Attorney General Kris Mayes is accusing top Republican legislators of trying to do an end-run around the lawmaking process by asking the state Supreme Court to make a change in how appellate judges are elected.
In a new court filing, lawyers for Mayes pointed out that House Speaker Ben Toma pushed a measure through the Legislature earlier this year, on a party-line vote, to allow all Arizonans, regardless of where they live, to vote on all judges for the state Court of Appeals. That ended up being vetoed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs who said she believed the move “would unfairly dilute” the votes of some Arizonans by having the choice of appellate judges from their area decided by voters from the entire state.
Now Toma and Senate President Warren Petersen have joined with the Goldwater Institute, which supported his proposal, to claim that the system they sought unsuccessfully to overturn is unconstitutional. Mayes told the justices they should spurn their effort.
“(They) now turn to this court to achieve what they could not in the political arena,” Mayes said. “Policy disagreement with the governor is no basis for a constitutional claim.”
And if nothing else, the attorney general said there is no reason they should be able to skip having to make their arguments to a trial judge who can hear evidence and witnesses and instead go directly to the state’s high court. And she derided claims by Goldwater, which lobbies against government regulation, often on behalf of business, that there is a need for immediate Supreme Court action, bypassing the traditional process.
“Petitioners try to concoct an emergency where none exists,” Mayes told the justices through lawyers for her office. “The laws and procedures petitioners challenge have been in place for decades.”
The system being challenged goes back to 1964 when the Legislature set up the Court of Appeals into two divisions.
