Posts tagged Arizona Supreme Court
Phoenix to Face AZ Supreme Court Scrutiny over Public Records Refusal
September 14, 2025 // Coming just days before Goldwater lawyers argue another important case before justices—one involving the rights to free speech and privacy—this new case, called Goldwater Institute v. Phoenix, involves the Arizona Public Records Act (the state’s version of the Freedom of Information Act). The Institute sought documents from the city concerning its labor negotiations with public sector unions—negotiations that produce contracts that often include illegal subsidies such as “release time” (which was the subject of still another case we won before the Supreme Court). But the city refused to turn over the documents, claiming the records could be kept from the public under the so-called “best interests of the state” exception—a judge-made rule that enables government entities to withhold information if they think turning over certain information would be bad for the “public interest.” There’s a lot wrong with that. For one thing, the city failed to show that disclosing the documents would actually harm the public. Instead, the city’s witnesses simply claimed that disclosing the documents “may result in” the “politicization” of negotiations between the city and the union.
AZ Supreme Court Strikes Down Union ‘Release Time’ on Taxpayers’ Dime
July 31, 2024 // In this case, the city signed a Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, with a local unit of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union. Under that MOU, the city gave the union several release time benefits, including four full-time release positions. In other words, the city paid four employees to work exclusively for the union on the taxpayers’ dime. The MOU said the cost of release time counted as part of the “total compensation” paid to all unit employees, whether members of the labor union or not. But that raised a problem: if release time was being paid as part of their “total compensation,” then it violates the free expression and association rights of these employees to force them to give up their compensation to fund the political speech of union representatives with whom these employees disagree. That was just what the U.S. Supreme Court said in the 2018 landmark Janus ruling.