To paraphrase Arizonan Alice Cooper, SCOTUS — the Supreme Court of the United States — is out for summer.
As the nine justices do at the end of every June, they dropped quite a few major legal decisions on the American people — some of which pertain to issues that are at the heart of political discourse in Arizona, like immigration, election administration and, of course, public school sports.
Some Arizona elected officials were even involved with bringing and supporting the cases that the justices weighed.
But for just about everyone, the court’s latest assemblage of rulings is a mixed bag.
Democrats, Republicans and activists of all ideological persuasions took to social media and press releases to simultaneously celebrate and lament different decisions from the highest court in the land.
Born in the U.S.A.
Without a doubt, this year’s blockbuster ruling was the court’s 6-3 decision to strike down President Donald Trump’s attempt at outlawing birthright citizenship, which is pretty clearly laid out in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Chief Justice John Roberts — appointed by former President George W. Bush — wrote the majority opinion, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurring in large part. Kavanaugh agreed on striking down the executive order but based his reasoning on federal statute instead of the Fourteenth Amendment, leading some to call the decision a 5-4 ruling.
Arizona Democrats celebrated the opinion, while Attorney General Kris Mayes pointed out she helped make it happen with other attorneys general who joined together to challenge the executive order.
“We live in a democracy, not a dictatorship,” Democratic Sen. Catherine Miranda said in a press release. “No president is above the Constitution, and no president has the authority to decide who deserves to be an American. That’s not how our democracy works.”
Democratic Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva said the matter was “never a legitimate legal question” and called for the left to keep up the battle against Trump’s “anti-immigrant agenda and his effort to redefine who gets to be an American, and what this country looks like.”
The ruling was a major blow to the MAGA universe and Trump, whose executive order redefining citizenship was a bold challenge to the text of the Constitution.
The president was already primed to face a humiliating loss from the conservative-controlled Supreme Court when, back in April, he became the first American president to attend oral arguments being made before the justices in this case.
Taking a front row seat, Trump apparently listened for about an hour as the justices picked apart the executive order, then left abruptly because he “got bored.”
While months ago, a furious Trump warned that “dumb judges and justices” would rule against him, he was far less combative yesterday, saying the ruling was “too bad for our Country.”
We’d argue that what’s too bad for our country is that we have three Supreme Court justices who don’t think our Constitution guarantees citizenship to all children born in the United States. That was a close call!
The Republican Party’s top officials in Arizona have been relatively quiet on the ruling, likely sensing that Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship was a far-fetched quest to begin with.
The defeat of Trump’s executive order has major implications for Arizona, which has a large population of immigrants, and means the 3,400 or so babies born in the state each year to parents without legal status will remain protected with citizenship.
Tired, poor huddled masses not welcome
But the court also made a decision on a separate immigration matter that has the left up in arms: the United States’ asylum and temporary protected status (TPS) programs.
In the 6-3 decision, the court ruled that the Trump administration can axe legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disasters in places like Haiti and Syria, which opens the door for protections to terminate for hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers.
The court, with conservative Justice Samuel Alito writing the opinion, also proclaimed the Trump administration has the power to end the much larger TPS program, which protects 1.3 million people from deportation and allows them to work in the United States.
Even as Grijalva reveled righteously in the birthright citizenship decision, she called the TPS ruling a “moral stain” and claimed the court was “enabling” Trump’s efforts to change what the country looks like.
“Their right-wing majority sided with Trump’s extreme immigration agenda to block asylum seekers at the southern border and strip protections from people fleeing authoritarian regimes, war, and persecution,” Grijalva said. “The right to seek asylum from life-threatening violence and persecution is not just enshrined in U.S. law – it is protected under international law.”
At least 6,500 migrants with temporary protected status live in Arizona, according to the National Immigration Forum, and some organizations estimate the count is closer to 8,000.
Benching trans kids in sports
Arizona Republicans seemed to be most elated about a 6-3 ruling — with conservative and liberal justices strictly divided — that it’s constitutional for states to ban transgender athletes from playing on girls' teams in public schools and women’s teams in college.
Senate President Warren Petersen, who’s also running to be the GOP nominee for attorney general in this year’s election, had been putting quite a bit of time and effort into the culture war battle. He even traveled to the Supreme Court to hear oral arguments.
The ruling allows Arizona’s top public schools official, Tom Horne, to enforce Arizona’s 2022 law that created such a ban after years of federal judges ruling that transgender athletes be allowed to compete.
“The news has been full of stories about girls who worked hard on their sports, hoping to make the team, or even earn a college scholarship or qualify for the Olympics,” Horne said in a press release. “But then they had to compete against biological boys and their advantages in birth in size, speed and strength. The girls’ dreams were shattered and they were devastated.”
The “news” being “full of stories” is a bit of a stretch, the executive director of ACLU Arizona, Victoria López, noted.
“There are so few transgender athletes in Arizona and across the country. Even so, they still have the right to participate in their lives, play sports, go to school and be their authentic self,” López said. “What we’ve seen is the Trump administration and some elected officials use these issues — like transgender girls playing in sports or anti-immigrant policies — to really other or dismiss the rights of people in this country.”
It might also be an unfortunate loss for right-wing grifters like Riley Gaines, who has made a career out of whining about coming in fifth place in a swim competition and was recently caught on camera asking somebody to coach her on what her “sincerely held values” are.
But probably not.
Republican Rep. Selina Bliss also tweeted a video featuring Arizona’s wannabe Gaines — Kaylie Ray — as both are urging the state’s voters to pass HCR2003, a ballot referral that aims to more firmly establish biological sex at birth as a key element.
Can we still have elections?
There are also two voting issues the justices have taken up that are worth noting.
The court ruled in a 5-4 decision that states can count ballots that arrive after Election Day, which Trump and Republicans have targeted in election integrity efforts. Trump called that ruling a “tremendous loss” and used the opportunity to advocate for Congress to pass the “SAVE America Act,” which would place major restrictions on mail-in voting.
But that ruling won’t affect Arizona’s elections, because state law says only ballots that arrive by 7 p.m. on Election Day can be counted. (Some other states use the deadline of postmarked by Election Day.)
Finally, when it gets back in action in the fall, SCOTUS is also scheduled to consider two Arizona laws that critics argue violate the National Voter Registration Act by requiring documented proof of citizenship to vote.
"It will not affect Arizona's 2026 elections,” Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in a press release. “Arizona voters should continue registering and voting under the current rules — which require documented proof of citizenship and voter ID.”
Until then, we’ll be thinking about this meme.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire: Right after Democratic U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego was cleared by a Senate Ethics Committee, he got the news that the Department of Justice opened an investigation into his campaign finances, Zach Buchanan reports for the New Times. As Buchanan notes, the president has turned the DOJ into a cudgel he can wield against his political enemies. But Gallego did take some heat recently for spending campaign money on trips to Disney theme parks and the Super Bowl. He says he has to pay for childcare while campaigning, and meeting donors at luxurious locales is part of campaigning. The DOJ probe spurred Gallego to post a video that looks a lot like what fellow Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly said when Trump officials tried to strip him of his military benefits for urging service members to disobey illegal orders.
Axon making moves: Speaking of questionable financial decisions by politicians, President Donald Trump bought somewhere between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock in Axon in February, two weeks before ICE announced it was looking for a company to fulfill a $220 million contract for Tasers. Axon was the only company that met the specifications of the contract, per CNBC. Back in Scottsdale, where Axon is headquartered, City Councilman Barry Graham (alongside his running mates Bob Littlefield and Michelle Ugenti-Rita) says Axon is funding a campaign to kill his reelection bid and take over the city government, Tom Scanlon reports for the Scottsdale Progress. A former Axon spokesman said Graham is “making stuff up.” But company executives did contribute heavily to a PAC that targeted candidates who didn’t want to give Axon free rein as it builds its massive new headquarters. Now, that PAC has rebranded and is targeting the trio of council candidates.
Sick people can’t work: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes joined yet another lawsuit against the Trump administration. This time, she’s teaming up with nearly two dozen states to push back on new work requirements for Medicaid benefits that were included in last year’s Big Beautiful Bill, the Republic’s Stephanie Innes reports. The work requirements could affect as many as 500,000 Arizonans and come as the Common Sense Institute pegs Arizona’s unemployment rate as the highest it’s been since the pandemic, per the Herald/Review.
The Queen of Bipartisanship: As Gov. Katie Hobbs runs for reelection, she’s touting bipartisan cooperation during her first term, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger reports. Hobbs pointed to the bipartisan budget as an example, although she did veto 151 bills this year, further cementing her record for most vetoes by an Arizona governor. One area that did get bipartisan attention this year was reforming the state’s child welfare system, Republican Sen. Carine Werner told KTAR’s Jim Sharpe. Both sides of the aisle got together to pass 13 new laws that cover everything from supervision at foster homes to reporting child abuse.
One thing we can all agree on is the need to support independent, local journalism. Right?
If you can’t stand the heat: The Arizona Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the voter-approved ballot measure that requires groups to disclose the source of dark money spent on political campaigns, Bob Christie reports for Capitol Media Services. In the 4-3 opinion, the justices said the “Voters’ Right to Know Act,” passed in 2022, doesn’t infringe on the privacy rights of political donors, as the Center for Arizona Policy and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club argued. (Hilariously, they filed the lawsuit alongside two unnamed donors.) But the justices didn’t rule on whether the law infringes on the free speech rights of the two organizations, which argued donors might not give them money if they’re afraid of being harassed for making political donations.
As the first Asian American to ever win a statewide office in Arizona, Kimberly Yee has undoubtedly had to put up with a lot of racist bullshit.
That includes the latest attack against her, launched by allies of state schools superintendent Tom Horne.
The dark money attack ad hits her for “running a national shadow government of bureaucrats pushing an extreme DEI agenda.”
Her actual crime? Serving on a committee of the National Association of State Treasurers that focused on DEI. (Yee has long been an opponent of DEI, and it’s not even clear what that committee did.)
Anyway, a couple of funny aspects to this otherwise incredibly sad display of modern American politics:
It’s actually a good case for why DEI initiatives should exist — because the U.S. still clearly runs on so much structural racism that political hacks think calling her “empress” alongside a gong noise and some Asian imagery is a winning attack.
Horne is now on his heels, denouncing the racist attack made by his allies (with whom he legally can’t coordinate).
As 12News reporter Brahm Resnik notes, this isn’t the group’s first poor-taste attack on an Arizona politico.
And our favorite: It gave Yee a chance to remind the media and the voters about years’ worth of old Horne stories. For example, here’s how KJZZ summed up Yee’s response:
“Tom Horne has a long history of lying. He has lied about his bankruptcy with the Securities and Exchange Commission. They banned him from trading for a lifetime. He lied to his wife while he was having an affair with his mistress, who was also his employee,” Yee said.
She also brought up a 2012 hit-and-run incident in which Horne struck a car in a parking garage and fled the scene while serving as the state attorney general, and his alleged use of taxpayer funds to run his campaign.
In 2012, Horne was driving and bumped another car in a parking garage. The hit-and-run was witnessed by FBI agents, who were following Horne as part of an investigation into possible campaign finance violations.
Horne was in the parking lot of an apartment complex where one of his employees, Carmen Chenal, lived.
He was married at the time and was having an affair with Chenal. Horne later married Chenal after his wife died.
As we wrote four years ago, voters’ memories are way too short. So it’s good to keep reminding them who Horne really is.