2011 LEGISLATIVE RECAP
At nearly 5:30 AM on April 20, 2011, Arizona’s fiftieth Legislature adjourned its regular session and went home. The session lasted a rather brief 100 days, but many legislators still managed to score substantial legislative victories. The results for civil liberties were decidedly mixed.
The session itself started out in tragically unexpected fashion. While the Legislature had planned to open the session with a festive nod to Arizona’s impending centennial birthday, the Tucson shootings cast a sad pall throughout the Capitol. Early flourishes of bipartisanship were cause for cautious optimism, but they eventually gave way to traditional party-line voting on several critical issues.
On the issue of immigration, however, bipartisanship endured, which was essential to the first major civil liberties victory of the session. In mid-March, Republican and Democrat state senators joined together to kill five of the most nakedly anti-immigrant bills the Legislature has ever seen. These bills would have prevented undocumented children from receiving any kind of education, criminalized nearly every aspect of daily living for undocumented residents, gutted the 14th Amendment’s precious and hard-won right of citizenship, and frightened people away from medical centers by turning hospital workers into de facto immigration agents. Recognizing the toll that SB 1070 took on our state, a majority of senators recognized the need to turn away from this kind of legislation and bravely cast votes against these bills, in spite of intimidation, insults, and threats of political reprisal. Similarly, SB 1222, which would have severely penalized undocumented residents for even visiting a public housing unit, stalled in the House of Representatives.
Unfortunately, civil liberties took a beating in other areas. Reproductive freedom was under attack almost from the beginning. Legislators passed one bill that broadens the definition of the term “abortion”—thereby making it easier to regulate—pressures women to view fetal ultrasound images and listen to fetal heartbeat recordings before getting an abortion, and eliminates abortion options for women in rural locations. Another bill prevents charitable organizations from receiving donations if they provide, pay for, or promote abortions or if they financially support any other entities that do so. The same bill would also prevent any public monies, including student tuition, from being used to train people how to perform abortions, possibly jeopardizing the accreditation of the University of Arizona College of Medicine’s obstetrics and gynecology program. The Legislature also decided to prohibit abortions performed on the basis of the race or sex of the fetus, despite the absolute lack of evidence that such abortions occur in Arizona. Governor Brewer signed all three bills.
The state also invited itself into traditionally private family matters. The Legislature passed a bill that would give married couples a “tiebreaker preference” over single adults and same-sex couples in adoptions. And married couples will now have to wait even longer before completing divorce proceedings, thanks to another just-passed bill. As for other privacy matters, the Legislature empowered laboratories to access private medical information from patient files and expanded the circumstances under which juveniles accused of committing a crime can be compelled to provide a DNA sample.
Many of the battles we won this year will be fought again next year. The battles we lost will be re-waged with even higher stakes. The ardent voices of our membership will be needed to ensure that our officials think twice before playing fast and loose with our civil liberties.