By Howard Fischer | Capitol Media Services
Republican legislative leaders are asking a judge to allow voters to decide whether they want to adopt a multi-pronged measure billed as protecting border security.
In court filings, Kory Langhofer, one of their attorneys, said challengers are off-base when they contend that what is in what GOP lawmakers labeled the “Secure the Border Act” violates constitutional requirements that ballot measures deal with only a single subject.
Langhofer acknowledged that there are several different provisions in the measure, approved on a party-line vote as HCR 2060. They include:
- Making it a crime for those not here legally to enter Arizona from Mexico other than at a port of entry;
- – Increasing penalties for using false documents to obtain public benefits or evade laws about hiring undocumented individuals;
- Strengthening laws that require public documentation to receive public benefits;
- Imposing harsher penalties for those who sell fentanyl that causes the death of another person.
But Langhofer told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Minder that the provisions all relate to the single, general subject of “responding to harms relating to Arizona’s unsecured southern border.”
