Former Arizona state Senator Michelle Ugenti-Rita called on Rep. Jake Hoffman, founding chairman ofthe Arizona Freedom Caucus, to amend a bill involving sexually explicit materials in schools to include the Maricopa County Library District.
Senate Bill 1007 proposed by Hoffman, a Republican, makes it a class 5 felony for a public school to show a student sexually explicit materials or use it in the classroom in any way.
“I would like to encourage the bill sponsor, @JakeHoffmanAZ and my former colleagues to amend this bill to include the Maricopa County Library District since @ThomasGalvin won’t do anything to stop county libraries from facilitating a liberal woke agenda by promoting sexually graphic and sensitive material to children,” said Ugenti-Rita, a Republican who represented Arizona’s District 23 from 2019 to 2023.
The bill prohibits Arizona public schools to refer students to sexually explicit material unless “the material possesses serious educational value for minors or serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value” or “the public school requires written parental consent, on a per-material basis, before referring a student to or using the material.”
The public school must also provide students whose parents do not consent for them to see the material with an alternative assignment that does not contain sexually explicit material.
Sexually explicit materials include “textual, visual or audio materials or materials accessed via any other medium that depict sexual conduct, sexual excitement or ultimate sexual acts,” the bill says.
Charter schools can require parents to waive the right to object to learning materials or activities as a condition of enrollment if the charter school provides a comprehensive list of books and materials used for instruction each school year before the student enrolls.
The parent keeps the right to object to those materials if they are altered after the students’ enrollment.
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
Former Gov. Doug Ducey enacted the birth control deregulation that took effect earlier this month, but Gov. Katie Hobbs is taking the credit.
In a press release, Hobbs framed the deregulation as timely on her part considering that “extremists across the country” have been threatening access to contraceptives.
“Reproductive freedom is critical to the individuals and families working hard to create a life for themselves in Arizona,” said Hobbs. “We are building an Arizona for everyone, which means ensuring people across the state have what they need to live a free and healthy life. I will never stop fighting to protect freedoms for Arizonans and standing up to the extremists who threaten access to the basic healthcare our families rely on.”
However, Ducey signed the deregulation into law through SB1082 in 2021. Former State Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a Republican, introduced the legislation.
Considering the highly politically divided environment we live in and grappling with controversial topics like contraceptives, abortion and prescription authority it was no small feat getting this bill passed and signed into law and doing it with broad bipartisan support to boot.… https://t.co/3DkwlLY3Zr
— Michelle Ugenti Rita (@MichelleUgenti) July 1, 2023
It took several years for Arizona’s regulatory agencies to secure final approval for the deregulation, mainly due to delay on the part of the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy (ASBP). SB1082 directed the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy (ASBP) to work with the Arizona Department of Health Services (AZDHS) to adopt procedural rules for pharmacies to distribute the contraceptives.
During ASBP’s final discussion of rulemaking on the deregulation last month, ASBP Executive Director Kam Gandhi explained that they prioritized other issues.
“We’re just now getting to it, but obviously over the last two, three years, we’ve had other challenges and that was more pressing than hormonal contraceptives,” said Gandhi.
The Governor’s Regulatory Review Council (GRRC) issued the final approval.
Under the deregulation, Arizonans over 18 years old no longer need to secure a prescription in order to buy hormonal birth control or contraceptives. Instead, those seeking the contraceptives will need to receive a blood pressure test and annual screening at the pharmacy. Pharmacists retain the right to refuse to dispense contraceptives if they believe the drug would pose a harm to the patient, or if contraceptives violate their religious or moral beliefs.
Pharmacists are also required to tell the patient when and how to use the contraceptive, the risks associated with the contraceptive, and when to seek medical assistance while taking the contraceptive.
As part of the deregulation, ASBP expanded pharmacists’ continuing education requirements to mandate three hours minimum on hormonal contraceptives prior to receiving a license renewal every two years.
The ASBP discussed implementing the legislation during a Task Force Rule Writing Work Group meeting last September that included Lisa Villarroel with AZDHS and Laura Mercer with the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).
In drafting the procedural rules, ASBP relied on precedent established by the 21 other states that allow pharmacists to distribute birth control without a prescription. Those states are Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawai’i, Idaho, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia (in their documentation, ASBP recognized the District of Columbia as a state, which made their total 22 states).
The ASBP task force again discussed the rulemaking for the deregulation in February, followed by public comment on the proposed procedural rules in May, and final approval last month.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
On Wednesday, the Arizona House approved a Senate bill to repeal the governor’s current executive powers in public health emergencies.
Instead, SB1009 would ensure governors only have the authority to issue a state of emergency for public health emergencies for 30 days. After that, the governor would be limited to extending that state of emergency for 30 days at a time with a limit of 120 days or about four months. Once that time is exhausted, the state legislature must consent to any new state of emergency.
The governor wouldn’t be able to extend the state of emergency more than once without additional reporting requirements. After 60 days of an emergency, the governor must submit a written report to a joint committee of the Senate and House health committees. That committee will assess the report along with a Arizona Department of Health Services briefing and publish a public review of the extension.
SB1009 also empowers the state legislature to extend the state of an emergency for public health emergencies as well. Those extensions would be limited to 30 days, too.
The bill passed along party lines. It now heads to Governor Doug Ducey for final approval.
Ducey only ended the COVID-19 state of emergency at the end of last month: well over two years after the initial state of emergency was issued.
This legislative session covered other changes to Arizona’s state of emergency protocol. Ducey signed HB2507 on Monday, ensuring that religious services would be considered essential during a state of emergency. Over the last two years, other state governments forced the closure of religious buildings and worship gatherings, punishing those who dared to defy their public health orders in order to exercise their religious freedoms.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Arizona’s Permanent Early Voter List (PEVL) is no longer permanent, after Gov. Doug Ducey signed one of Arizona’s most important pieces of election integrity legislation in years on Tuesday.
The Arizona Senate approved SB1485 earlier in the day to ensure Arizona voters receive a mail-in ballot only if they signed-up to and now wish to continue automatically receiving a ballot before each election. It provides for a voter’s removal from the newly named Early Voting List (EVL) if a voter did not cast a ballot in at least one of four consecutive elections and did not respond to messages from their county recorder to remain on the list.
“This bill is a modest, but critical step toward restoring confidence in our election system,” sponsor Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita stated in a press release.
Proponents of SB1485 touted its cost-savings impact for counties from only printing and paying postage for early ballots a voter expects to use. But the main impact, they said, would be ensuring that tens of thousands of early ballots are not mailed out to voters who no longer utilize the option.
Opponents of the bill deflected from the election integrity benefit and tried to characterize the bill as targeting minority populations to make it harder to vote.
However, being dropped from what is now EVL has no impact on a voter’s right to vote and all voters remain registered to vote. That was a message the governor focused on in his comments while signing SB1485 a short time after its passage in the Senate on a 16 to 14 vote.
“Let’s be clear — despite all the deceptive and heated rhetoric being used by some partisan activists to lobby against this reform, not a single Arizona voter will lose their right to vote as a result of this new law,” Ducey stated in a video his office released to announce that SB1485 had been signed.
Ugenti-Rita’s bill was amended several weeks ago to win the support of more Republican lawmakers in the House. The amendment softened the bill, according to experts, so that a voter would have to miss all elections within a two-year period -including any city or other minor elections- to be dropped from the EVL.
Ducey used the bill’s signing to push back on national companies inserting themselves into Arizona’s election laws.
“These big businesses have seemed to embrace a static view of elections,” he said. “Freeze the systems the way they are and view any change suspiciously. It’s wrong. Dead wrong.”
On Tuesday, the Democrats in the Arizona House of Representatives attempted to prevent a vote on an election integrity bill, and then when that failed, Rep. Athena Salman called for a boycott of the state if the bill passed.
Earlier in the day, Democrat lawmakers refused to show up to work in order to prevent a quorum as part of their effort to block a vote on SB1485.
Later, in a vote along party lines, Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita’s bill passed and is now headed back to the Senate.
SB1485 would remove people from the Early Voting List (EV), who don’t return their mail ballot for two consecutive election cycles from the permanent list, which allows voters to automatically receive a ballot before each election.
Smeared it as “Jim Crow 2.0” & said “Super Bowl” & “Final Four” boycott would be “rightfully so” b/c they “don’t want any kind of affiliation” with AZ.
Not everyone shared Salman’s view. Sen. TJ Shope, a moderate Republican, tweeted his support for the bill:
I look forward to supporting SB1485 in the Senate. It’s NOT unreasonable to send a notice to a PEVL voter after NOT voting in FOUR consecutive elections and confirming their intent to remain on PEVL. The hyperbole surrounding this bill is disgusting & offensive to POC like myself https://t.co/tLTfGLYtyM
Sen. Salman and the Arizona House Democrats continue to make discredited statements about SB1485, including allegations that the bill would “purge” the early voting list and “infringe” on voting rights.
The reason the bill heads back to the Senate is that it was amended to win the support of more Republican lawmakers in the House.
The amendment softened the bill, according to experts.
Before the amendments, a person could be removed from EVL after not using an early ballot in two consecutive primaries and general elections. Under the amendments, a person would have to miss all elections within a two-year period including city or other minor elections, to be dropped from the EVL.
In all cases, voters remain registered to vote. They are simply dropped from the list of mail-in ballot recipients.
