The Round Up: Working Overtime

Hobbs expands contraceptive access, Mayes arraigns alternate electors.

Following the failed Senate vote on the Secure the Border Act earlier this month, the attention of state leaders has (at least temporarily) shifted from immigration to a myriad of other issues. Just this past week, the state legislature took bold steps against the Biden Administration’s new electric vehicle (EV) regulations. Governor Katie Hobbs also responded to recent abortion-related legal developments by issuing an executive order expanding access to contraception for state workers. In addition to initiatives on EVs and abortion, state leaders also took steps to improve access to housing and cut down teen violence. 

In a couple of major moves last week, Attorney General Kris Mayes worked her way into the national spotlight. First, Mayes unsealed the April indictment naming eighteen individuals for participating in the 2020 Arizona alternate elector scheme. While most of the defendants were already publicly known, the decision to unseal revealed multiple prominent names associated with former-President Donald Trump’s campaign. Last week, Mayes also announced that the State of Arizona was suing Amazon over inflated pricing and harm caused to third-party retailers. Further, Mayes sued a local health care facility over alleged elder abuse.

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Governor Hobbs Acts on Contraception

On Monday, Governor Katie Hobbs issued an Executive Order intended to “expand access to free and affordable birth control” for women in the state. In response to recent events that have caused “uncertainty” surrounding abortion laws in Arizona — including the Arizona Supreme Court's “ruling on Arizona’s territorial-era abortion ban,” the Arizona Legislature's “unjustified delay in repealing the territorial-era abortion ban,” and the Legislature's “repeated failure to consider and pass measures that would protect the rights of Arizonans to access contraception” — Governor Hobbs announced several contraception-focused initiatives. These actions center on: “making over-the-counter birth control options available at no cost to State employees, reporting on the costs and benefits of requiring expanded contraception coverage for other health insurance plans, and requiring [Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS)] to consider ways it can expand access to contraception for its members.”

Specifically, Governor Hobbs’ executive order aims to protect Opill and other potential FDA-approved “over-the-counter self-administered hormonal contraception” under state law. Hobbs’ order would label federally-approved contraception as a “preventative essential health benefit,” that would be “no cost to participants, with or without a prescription, under the State Plan as soon as practicable.” Under the order, the Arizona Department of Administration would be required to notify State employees “who are or can be enrolled in the State Plan” of the benefit change. Also, the Department must submit a report to the Governor’s office focused on “analyzing the benefits and feasibility of any additional options for expanding access to contraception.” 

• Governor Katie Hobbs (D-AZ): “Access to contraception is a right. While members of our legislature tell Arizona women to put aspirin between their knees instead of taking action to pass the Arizona Right to Contraception Act, I will continue to do everything in my power to protect our reproductive freedom and ensure every Arizonan can access contraception.”

Mayes Unseals Alternate Elector Indictment, Electors Plead Not Guilty

Also on Monday, Attorney General Kris Mayes published an unredacted version of the April indictment charging eighteen individuals as part of the 2020 alternate elector scheme. The indictment names eleven individuals who served as alternate electors, as well as seven members of the Trump campaign. Included among the indictments were former Trump administration Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Attorney Rudy Giuliani, who were the only two individuals in this week’s batch that hadn’t been served prior to the original indictments last month. In an interview with CNN, Mayes commented that seventeen of the indicted individuals “accepted service, quietly, professionally, the way this usually happens,” while Giuliani was “absolutely the last of the 18 defendants here in Arizona to be served.” 

In addition to Giuliani and Meadows, Mayes has named the following individuals as part of the “ongoing” investigation: Arizona State Senators Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern; former state GOP chair Kelli Ward and her husband, Michael Ward; RNC Committeeman Tyler Bowyer; GOP activist Nancy Cottle; former GOP U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon; former Cochise County Republican Committee Chair Robert Montgomery; former Gila County GOP Vice Chair Samuel Moorhead; GOP activist Lorraine Pelegrino, former Arizona GOP Executive Director Gregory Safsten; former Trump lawyer John Eastman; former Trump aide and current Trump advisor Boris Epshteyn; RNC senior counsel for election integrity and former Trump campaign attorney Christina Bobb; former Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis; and former Trump campaign aide Michael Roman. 

On Tuesday, eleven of the aforementioned defendants—Giuliani, Kern, both Ward’s, Bowyer, Cottle, Montgomery, Moorhead, Pelegrino, Safsten, and Eastman—pleaded not guilty in Maricopa County Superior Court. Giuliani was the lone defendant required to post bond, most likely due to the “dodgy” behaviors previously highlighted by AG Mayes. According to reports, Meadows, Hoffman, Lamon, and Ellis will be among the next group of defendants to appear in court in June. 

• John Eastman: “I, of course, plead not guilty. I’m confident that, with the laws faithfully applied, I will be exonerated at the end of this process.”

• Attorney General Kris Mayes (D-AZ): “I will not allow American democracy to be undermined…We're here because justice demands an answer to the efforts that the defendants and other unindicted co-conspirators allegedly took to undermine the will of Arizona's voters during the 2020 presidential election. Arizona's election was free and fair. The people of Arizona elected President Biden. Unwilling to accept this fact, the defendants charged by the State Grand Jury allegedly schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the Presidency. Whatever their reasoning was, the plot to violate the law must be answered for, and I was elected to uphold the law of this state.”

AG Mayes Files Multiple Suits Against Amazon

Image credit: AZ Big Media

Last Wednesday, Attorney General Mayes announced that the State had sued Amazon over alleged “unfair and deceptive business practices.” In two separate lawsuits, AG Mayes calls for the e-commerce giant to be “held accountable” for multiple “violations of [Arizona] state laws.” Specifically, Mayes’ lawsuits chastize Amazon for “keeping prices for Arizona consumers artificially high,” and also for “harm[ing] smaller third-party retailers.”

In the first lawsuit, Mayes labels Amazon Prime’s cancellation process as “intentionally confusing and misleading.” Mayes argues that Amazon employs tactics intended to cause misdirection, such as using “misleading wording and graphics,” as well as “emphasizing the benefits lost upon cancellation to dissuade users from leaving the service.” Further, AG Mayes cites Amazon’s use of “dark patterns” to “influence and manipulate consumer choices.” According to Mayes, these methods allegedly include “requir[ing] users to navigate a complicated and manipulative interface with skewed wording, confusing choices, and repeated nudging.”

The Attorney General’s second lawsuit focuses on Amazon’s Buy Box algorithm, which determines what offers are made available to customers via the “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” buttons. While Mayes noted that the algorithm is supposed to “choose the offer that most consumers would prefer,” her lawsuit asserts that Amazon’s system is “biased toward offers that maximize [the company’s] profits.” Mayes went on to argue that the algorithm actively “mislead[s] consumers,” and also “unfairly impact[s] smaller third-party sellers.”

In response to Mayes, Amazon cited the Attorney General’s lack of engagement with the company ahead of levying the lawsuits. An Amazon spokesperson called the allegedly illegal practices “clear and simple,” before adding that any changes could lead to “higher prices.” 

• Attorney General Kris Mayes (D-AZ): “Amazon's anti-competitive and monopolistic practices have artificially inflated prices for Arizona consumers and harmed smaller third-party retailers that rely on its platform…No matter how big and powerful, all businesses must play by the same rules and follow the same laws as everyone else…Arizona consumers deserve to be treated fairly and without deception by big corporations like Amazon, and small businesses deserve a level playing field. Amazon should change its business practices to comply with Arizona law.”

• Amazon Spokesperson Tim Doyle: “We are surprised and disappointed by these cases, which the Arizona Attorney General initiated without reviewing a single document from Amazon, resulting in a fundamental misunderstanding and mischaracterization of how Amazon’s businesses work. Prime’s sign-up and cancellation processes are clear and simple by design, meeting a high bar for customer satisfaction well above legal requirements. Customers sign up for Prime because it’s an incredible service and a great value, and they can cancel their Prime membership with a few clicks from the home page. These suits would force Amazon to engage in practices that actually harm consumers and the many businesses that sell in our store—such as having to feature higher prices.”

AZ Republicans Sue EPA, California Over EV Rules

Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Last week, Republicans filed multiple lawsuits intended to block the Biden Administration’s recently-released electric vehicle (EV) rules. In their press release, Arizona Senate Republicans criticized the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for “overstepp[ing] its authority” after issuing multiple “mandates that promise to dramatically hurt the wallets of hardworking Arizonans and threaten our state's power supply.” After calling Democrat-supported EV mandates “radical and costly,” the Republicans emphasized the importance of blocking the “massive federal government overreach.”

The first two lawsuits were filed by Senate President Petersen, House Speaker Ben Toma, and the Arizona Trucking Association in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Specifically, these lawsuits aim to prevent the “hasty transition from gas-powered vehicles to electric vehicles” propagated by the Biden EPA. In emphasizing their opposition to the administration’s climate change agenda, Petersen, Toma, and the Arizona Trucking Association wrote that the EPA rules  “guarantee[] to raise the costs of everything Arizonans purchase, and without adequate charging infrastructure in place or the necessary power grid capacity.”

In a separate lawsuit filed last week, the Arizona State Legislature joined sixteen other states in suing the State of California over EV-related rules. Their lawsuit seeks to prevent implementation of another slate of rules “​​requiring trucking operators to buy expensive electric trucks and retire their diesel-fueled models, which can cost well over $100,000 more per electric truck.” According to the GOP’s release, the rulemaking would apply to trucking fleets based in Arizona and operating in California, and would subsequently “create dire impacts to the supply chain and dramatically raise costs for Arizona trucking companies that will inevitably be passed onto their customers.” 

• Senate President Warren Petersen (R-AZ): “These rules exceed the EPA's statutory authority, are arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion. In the absence of our Attorney General holding the Biden Administration accountable, the Legislature will gladly protect our citizens from this egregious abuse of power.”

• Senator Frank Carroll (R-AZ): “The climate change agenda from Democrats imposes expensive and unattainable goals on the automotive and trucking industries, which will undoubtedly lead to soaring consumer prices. We don't have the infrastructure to power these vehicles, and the average working-class citizen or trucking business can't afford to purchase them.”

• President & CEO of the Arizona Trucking Association Tony Bradley: “The EPA's tailpipe emissions rules prioritize politics over science, posing a greater threat to public health by inflating the cost of essential and everyday goods. Despite the trucking industry's remarkable progress — already reducing 98.5% of emissions — we're dedicated to further advancements through innovation and investment. Yet, the EPA's impractical mandates, targeting a mere 1.5% of remaining emissions, burden us with unrealistic expectations and exorbitant costs. We proudly join the Arizona Legislature in challenging these detrimental regulations.”

Other Relevant Headlines

• Gov. Hobbs signs bills that expands backyard casitas, chickens, among other legislation (May 21, 2024) - “Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a handful of bills into law on Tuesday, including several that allow homeowners to do more with their backyards. Hobbs signed HB 2720, which requires cities with a population of more than 75,000 people to allow accessory dwelling units, or casitas, on properties zoned for single-family homes. The bill received bipartisan support in the Legislature, but cities voiced concerns about the expansion of casitas as short-term rentals. The measure was part of a package deal with HB 2721, which changes zoning in certain cities to allow more housing…Hobbs also signed HB 2325, which prevents a city from banning backyard chickens at a single-family home.”

• Gilbert Council approves ordinance changes targeting teen violence (May 21, 2024) - “The Gilbert Town Council Tuesday approved two ordinance changes that target teen violence. The Gilbert Town Council Tuesday approved two ordinance changes that target teen violence. One ordinance bans the sale or possession of brass knuckles to minors, while the other targets unruly gatherings…The council ultimately unanimously approved both. Similar ordinance changes have already passed through a first vote in nearby Chandler.”

• Arizona Attorney General sues health care facility over illegal secrecy clause, elder abuse (May 22, 2024) - “Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is suing an organization that operates dozens of facilities in the state over its illegal secrecy clauses, officials announced on Monday. Mayes said she is suing to help the family of a man who died from neglect in a long-term care facility…The facility, Sun West Choice Health & Rehab Facility, is near R H Johnson and Meeker boulevards in Sun City West. t’s operated by The Ensign Group, Inc. which has more than 5,000 total beds across its dozens of Arizona facilities, Mayes said.”

• Donald Trump leads in Arizona as Joe Biden support wanes, poll says (May 22, 2024) - “Donald Trump is garnering more support in Arizona than Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to a poll released Wednesday. The poll from Noble Predictive Insights (NPI) has Trump at 44% and Biden at 41%, with 15% of likely voters undecided… A pair of national websites that track polls and publish updated averages — FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics — have Trump with about a 4% lead over Biden.”

This round-up was written by Jared (JJ) Cichoke. He currently works as a Policy Analyst after previously holding various roles with Senator Martha McSally (R-AZ) and the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. A graduate of Vanderbilt University, he recently moved to Arizona after spending nearly his entire life in Portland, Oregon.