Arizona Supreme Court says ballot measure to legalize marijuana can appear on November ballot

The Arizona Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for voters to decide on legalizing marijuana.

The court unanimously rejected a legal challenge to the Smart and Safe Arizona Act, ensuring it can appear on the ballot in November.

The order was just part of a flurry of decisions and announcements that included the state's high court shooting down an appeal by the backers of an initiative that would raise pay for many health care workers and reign in the medical industry practice known as surprise billing, scrapping that measure from the ballot.

And a Maricopa County Superior Court judge maintained that supporters of a proposal to overhaul the state's criminal sentencing laws did not collect enough valid petition signatures to get the initiative in front of voters in the general election.

That leaves Arizonans to decide on only two of the four initiatives proposed this year: one to legalize marijuana and another to increase funding for public schools by raising income taxes on higher income earners.

Marijuana initiative gets OK

The Smart and Safe Arizona Act would allow people 21 and older to posses up to an ounce of marijuana — currently a felony — and set up a system of licensing retailers to sell the drug, along with other provisions.

A campaign primarily funded by the conservative Center for Arizona Policy challenged the measure in court, arguing the short summary of the measure that proponents included on petitions was misleading.

Former Congressman John Shadegg, who served as the lawyer for the initiative's opponents, argued the summary either didn't explain or was unclear on provisions dealing with the definition of marijuana, the 16% excise tax that would be placed on sales of the drug and several other provisions.

Superior Court Judge James Smith rejected all of the arguments, contending that the challengers were imposing their personal beliefs on how the initiative should have been described.

While initiative petitions must include a short summary of no more than 100 words explaining the proposed measure's key provisions, courts have said the summary does not need to include every provision or be neutral.

“There’s nothing in this description that is actually wrong,” Smith wrote in a decision earlier this month.

The campaign opposed to the measure, Arizonans for Health and Public Safety, appealed to the state Supreme Court.

But the court affirmed Smith's decision in short order. The justices may elaborate on their thinking in a written opinion, but offered no immediate insight into their reasoning on Thursday.

The order sends the proposal to legalize marijuana into the general election that is expected to draw high turnout.

Though a proposal to legalize marijuana failed at the ballot box four years ago, recent polling suggests the Smart and Safe Arizona Act may get a better reception from voters.

A survey by OH Predictive Insights in July found more than 6 in 10 likely Arizona voters support legalizing marijuana.

"Arizonans are ready to stop arresting people for low level drug offenses and ruining the rest of their lives," said Stacy Pearson, a spokeswoman for the Smart and Safe campaign.

Shadegg said Arizonans for Health and Public Safety would continue its campaign against the measure and said the Supreme Court's decision sent a message that voters cannot trust the 100-word summary that appears on petitions.

"In this case, Big Marijuana sought to deceive Arizona voters and got away with it," he said.

Sentencing proposal disqua

Meanwhile, another campaign fell short of reaching the ballot.

The Secretary of State's Office said earlier this month that supporters of the Second Chances, Rehabilitation and Public Safety Act did not file enough valid signatures to get the measure on the Nov. 3 ballot.

The proposed initiative aimed to give judges more discretion in sentencing for some cases. And it would have allowed some people serving time in prison to earn release after spending half their sentence behind bars if their crimes were deemed nondangerous and they participated in rehabilitation programs, classes and other opportunities.

Supporters needed to collect 237,645 signatures from registered voters to get the measure on the ballot.

Proponents said they submitted 397,291 signatures. But the Secretary of State's Office said that after election officials checked a random sample of signatures against voter registration records, supporters appeared to be more than 20,000 valid signatures short.

Backers asked a Maricopa County Superior Court judge to take another look at signatures election officials had disqualified.

But the campaign was still short, and backers said Thursday the campaign was over.

The news was a blow to an unlikely group of advocates for sentencing reform, which included conservatives who see the state's swelling prisons as an affront to the idea of small government, civil rights activists who see the issue as a matter of racial justice and religious leaders who see the issue as a moral imperative.

The defeat was a reminder of the difficulty several campaigns faced this year in collecting signatures in the middle of a pandemic.

The news means proponents of changing the state's sentencing laws will have to look, for now, for other avenues besides the ballot box despite frustrations in passing legislation at a state Capitol controlled by Republican lawmakers.

"Until families are reunited, until we have a system that addresses trauma and harm without causing more trauma and harm, and until our loved ones are free, we will not stop," the American Friends Service Committee-Arizona, one of the religious organizations supporting the measure, said in a statement on Thursday.

Court rejects health care measure

The state Supreme Court on Thursday also sided with a judge who said the 100-word summary of a proposed initiative contained misleading language, keeping the Stop Surprise Billing and Protect Patients Act off the ballot.

The measure calls for a 5% wage increase each year for four years to direct-care hospital workers such as nurses, aides, technicians, janitors, social workers and nonmanagerial administrative staff.

Proponents said the measure also would stop surprise billing from out-of-network providers, require refunds for patients who are overcharged and require private hospitals to meet national safety standards on hospital-acquired infections.

Backed by a labor union that represents health care workers, the proposed measure faced heavy opposition from business groups and Republican lawmakers, who filed suit arguing that the summary of the measure was misleading.

A Superior Court judge agreed, taking issue, for example, with the summary's claim that the initiative "sets new minimum wages for direct care workers at private hospitals by requiring raises of at least five percent for each of four years."

That phrasing leaves the summary open to two different interpretations, Superior Court Judge Pamela Gates said.

While the measure calls for raising the pay of health care workers in a range of positions, the term “minimum wages” suggests that the measure would only set a new floor for the wages of the lowest-paid workers, she wrote.

The judge also deemed a pile of petition signatures invalid, leaving the measure short of the number necessary to qualify for the ballot.

Backers appealed, but the state Supreme Court rejected their arguments in short order, ensuring the measure will not appear on the ballot.

"The decision preserves the integrity of Arizona's initiative system, which an out-of-state special interest group attempted to undermine," said Garrick Taylor, a spokesperson for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the coalition of groups that opposed the measure.

Supporters of the measure maintained they gathered plenty of signatures and that the decision sent a message that citizens cannot exercise their basic rights through the ballot box.

"The court has demonstrated more empathy for millionaire CEOs than for the difficulties that Arizona families face every day," said Rodd McLeod, a spokesperson for the

Healthcare Rising Arizona campaign.

Contact Andrew Oxford at andrew.oxford@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter at @andrewboxford.

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