The Arizona Supreme Court unanimously decided on Thursday that the Maricopa County Superior Court and Arizona Court of Appeals erred in penalizing the Arizona Republican party by awarding attorney fees against them in a lawsuit contesting Maricopa County’s post-election hand-count audit procedures.
“We hold that the attorney fees award was improper because Petitioners’ claim was not groundless, thus obviating any need to determine whether the claim was made in the absence of good faith,” Justice John Lopez writes in the court’s opinion.
“During times of social and political contention and strife, we must be mindful that our courts provide a means of resolving such conflicts when issues are legitimately presented. By sanctioning parties and their lawyers for bringing debatable, long-shot complaints, courts risk chilling legal advocacy and citizens raising ‘questions’ under the guise of defending the rule of law. Even if done inadvertently and with the best of intentions, such sanctions present a real and present danger to the rule of law,” the ruling also states.
The Arizona Mirror reports,
The lawsuit was filed more than a week after the 2020 election and argued that the state law requiring limited post-election hand-count audits conflicted with the state’s Elections Procedures Manual, making it illegal to select ballots for the audit from voting centers instead of by precinct.
State law requires each county to hand count 1% of all early ballots, as well as the ballots from 2% of precincts after each election. The Election Procedures Manual issued by the secretary of state permits counties that use voting centers instead of precincts, a list that includes Maricopa County, to hand count the ballots from 2% of voting centers instead.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah dismantled the legal arguments that the AZGOP and its attorneys made. In addition to ignoring the law and the legislature’s intent when allowing for voting centers, Hannah said the Republican Party sought a remedy that the law doesn’t allow and waited far too long to file its suit.
The judge also said the party demonstrated it was not motivated by sincerely challenging a public policy, but instead by making a political case and sowing distrust about Arizona’s elections.
However, the Supreme Court opines, “We cannot countenance the trial court’s rigid delineation between the motives underlying election litigation— ‘political’ reasons, which invite sanction under § 12-349, and ‘legal or factual’ justifications, which are permissible.” It continues, “The desire to vindicate a legal right—even if in the election context and animated exclusively by political motives—is not relevant, much less per se sanctionable. Courts should focus on the legal and factual merits of a claim and the party’s and attorney’s conduct in the course of the litigation.”
“The trial court emphasized in its ruling that Petitioners’ gravest transgression and ‘direct evidence of bad faith’ was ‘[u]ndercutting the election’s legitimacy by raising “questions,”‘ which it characterized as ‘a threat to the rule of law posing as an expression of concern.’ But ‘raising questions’ by petitioning our courts to clarify the meaning and application of our laws and noting the potential consequences of the failure to do so—particularly in the context of our elections—is never a threat to the rule of law, even if the claims are charitably characterized as ‘long shots.’”
They further slam the trial court, writing, “the trial court dismissively described Petitioners’ interpretation of § 16-602(B) as ‘barely colorable’ despite its avowed disinterest in the merits and lack of substantive analysis.”
John Hannah, the partisan Judge previously mentioned by The Gateway Pundit, has ordered the Cyber Ninjas firm to pay a daily fine of $50,000 until they provide records from their review of the Maricopa County forensic audit to the Arizona Republic.
The Arizona GOP released a statement earlier celebrating the ruling:
https://twitter.com/AZGOP/status/1786145892984111308?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/BehizyTweets/status/1786109837216039241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
