Arizona Supreme Court Upholds Ruling That State’s Ban on School Mask Mandates Is Unconstitutional

ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images

The Arizona Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling striking down the state’s school mask mandate ban as unconstitutional.

In September Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper ruled it was unconstitutional because it was pushed into state budget legislation.

As NPR reported at the time:

“The issue here is not what the Legislature decided but how it decided what it did,” she wrote.

Cooper cited two rules in the Arizona Constitution to support her ruling. One states that a bill can only tackle one thing, or one single subject, at a time. When it comes to the budget, the subject is clearly supposed to be how to spend taxpayer dollars, Cooper wrote. Another constitutional rule requires bills to be given a title that accurately reflects the content of the bill.

Other provisions similarly pushed in were deemed unconstitutional because they did not fall under “budget procedure.”

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich went to the state Supreme Court to overturn the ruling, and he argued in court filings that this is a “political question” and not one for the court to determine.

The state Supreme Court ultimately upheld that ruling on Tuesday. Fox 10 Phoenix reported that the justices “hammered Solicitor General Beau Roysden with questions about the Legislature’s inclusion of policy as different as dog racing and secure ballot paper in one of the budget bills.”