Lawsuit filed against new Arizona laws, including school mask mandates
(The Center Square) – A coalition of Arizona education groups, teachers, and parents filed a lawsuit against several provisions of the Fiscal Year 2022 state budget, particularly the law prohibiting school mask mandates.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in Maricopa County Superior Court argued against the practice of adding policy legislation to budget bills. The coalition said that the budget bills violated a constitutional requirement because their titles do not reflect their contents. The suit asks the court to declare four of the 11 bills unconstitutional and seeks an injunction to block them from becoming law.
“Never before has the legislature so ignored the normal process and procedure for enacting laws as they did this session,” the lawsuit said. “It is up to the courts to enforce the dictates of the Arizona Constitution.”
If the plaintiffs are successful, the law making it illegal for school districts to enforce mask mandates would be overturned, as well as the law prohibiting the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public and charter schools and the law establishing a legislative committee to review the findings of the state Senate review of the November 2020 election results in Maricopa County.
The lawsuit also argued that the mask mandate law violates equal-protection rights for students because it applies to public and charter schools but not private schools. The coalition argued that school districts, cities, and towns should be allowed to require masks and that universities and community colleges should be able to require masks and vaccines.
“This is an action seeking to enjoin unconstitutional legislation that undermines our representative democracy, and to uphold the fundamental right of Arizona’s public schoolchildren,” the lawsuit stated.
The case was filed on behalf of the Arizona School Boards Association (ASBA), which represents the governing boards of many of the state’s school districts, the Arizona Education Association (AEA), a union that represents teachers and other school employees, nonprofit education groups Children’s Action Alliance and Arizona Advocacy Network, and 11 Arizona residents.
The coalition includes two Phoenix Union High School District (PUHSD) governing board members, parents, and teachers. The lawsuit was filed only a few days before the Maricopa County Superior Court ruled in favor of mask mandates in the PUHSD.
“Governor Ducey and the GOP legislative leadership are putting our children in harm’s way and our communities at risk,” Joe Thomas, AEA president, said in a statement about the lawsuit. “Their actions are reckless and abusive. By tying the hands of our local school board leaders, lawmakers are preventing them from making decisions to keep our students safe.”
“ASBA is pleased to be part of a coalition of education and children advocacy organizations, as well as many impacted individuals, in challenging the anti-mask mandate law,” Sheila Harrison-Williams, ASBA executive director, said in a statement.
“We do not want to mandate masks for all Arizona school districts;” she said, “we simply want those districts and their locally elected school board to be able to decide what’s best for their students and staff.”
CJ Karamargin, communications director for Gov. Doug Ducey’s office, told The Center Square that the governor’s office is “confident the legislation we signed is completely constitutional.”
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