Arizona voters should reject partisan zealots Clint Bolick and Kathryn King from continuing on the Arizona Supreme Court.
They voted to restore the 1864 total abortion ban on April 9, 2024, horrifying Arizonans. The ruling was so repellent that the state legislature took only 15 days to repeal the Bolick/King abortion ban.
They are unfit to serve and must be kicked off the court in the November 5 retention vote.
Gov. Ducey appointed Bolick and King to the Arizona Supreme Court in 2016, even though they had absolutely no prior judicial experience.
The abortion ban highlighted Bolick’s career of partisan attacks on citizen initiatives, public schools, voter rights, unions, municipal protections for citizens, renewable energy and Obamacare.
Decisions that harmed public education
In 2022, Justices Bolick and King blocked a referendum on the state’s recently enacted “flat tax.” Siding with the Goldwater Institute, the justices concluded that tax legislation is constitutionally immune from repeal by voters.
This was after Save Our Schools Arizona, the Arizona Education Association, and Stand for Children Arizona gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures to allow Arizona voters to weigh in on the flat tax.
The flat tax has created a $1.8 billion budget deficit, driving the continued underfunding of Arizona’s public schools (ranked 50th in the nation for funding).
In 2020, 1.7 million Arizona voters passed Proposition 208, a major citizens’ initiative to provide more than $800 million in funding to public education. But in 2021, Justice Bolick overruled a lower court’s decision on Prop 208, holding that it was unconstitutional. This decision granted lawmakers more power to undermine voter-approved measures and kill public school funding.
Biased background
No surprise, Bolick is a close friend of corrupt US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas took 103 payoffs worth more than $2.4 million between 2004 and 2023.
Both Justices Bolick and King are members of the Federalist Society, which promotes appointing right-wing judges to distort the nationwide courts. Bolick has for decades espoused Federalist Society doctrines of school “choice,” private property rights, unregulated free markets, and termination of affirmative action. In 2024 alone, Bolick participated in six Federalist Society speaking engagements.
Using money from the infamous billionaire Charles Koch, Bolick created the “Institute for Justice” in 1991 as an appendage of the MAGA Goldwater Institute. He created a job for himself as the director of litigation.
He has also been active in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which pushes pro-corporation copycat legislation in state legislatures nationwide. In 2019, Justice Bolick joined the 4-3 majority in favor of Brush & Nib vs. Phoenix, a case that allowed a design studio to discriminate against LGBTQ+ clients based on religious beliefs.
Kathryn King: Do Not Retain
Justice King, a registered Republican, is also a member of The Federalist Society. Before her appointment to the highest court in Arizona, King was Republican Gov. Ducey’s No. 2 lawyer.
She worked for ultra-conservative Arizona US Senator Jon Kyl in Washington, DC. Later, she practiced law at corporate law firms and developed an anti-worker practice in sexual harassment, civil rights, disabled workers and race discrimination cases.
She belonged to the Martha McSally Young Professionals Committee and the Republican Lawyers Association for Arizona.
She voted with the majority to reinstate Arizona’s territorial ban on abortions. Also, she voted to retain the wording “unborn human being” instead of the medically accurate “fetus” in the 2024 ballot pamphlet description.
In 2024, she attended a conference at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, which focuses on “constitutional originalism,” one of the guises used to justify some ultra-conservative and deregulatory decisions.
Rather than behave as impartial justices, Bolick and King have been active right-wing partisans in their eight years on the Supreme Court. Arizona deserves an independent judiciary to protect our free society. Voters have removed six judges since 1978, and it’s time to vote Bolick and King out, too.
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Ducey stacked the process to even get Bolick in the pool. He should have never been apppointed in the first place. It is entirely appropriate to bounce him for that in addition to his vote. Shame on the one vote majority for going over the top to try and innoculate those two.