Will state’s high court let rights be weakened?

petitions didn’t strictly comply with the law.

He didn’t argue that the boxes were checked inaccurately or that petition signers had been misled — only that the boxes were checked prematurely, and thus the signatures of 270,000 Arizonans should be tossed into the trash.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge James Smith didn’t buy that (or Langhofer’s other, stronger arguments).

Last week, he struck down the new strict-compliance mandate, saying it “unconstitutionally violates Arizona’s separation of powers doctrine and infringes on the people’s reserved power to legislate via initiative.”

“Our Supreme Court for decades has pointed to our Constitution as the basis for substantial, not strict, compliance regarding initiatives,” Smith wrote. “Legislation cannot fundamentally change that right reserved to the people.”

Since then, two other judges have ruled the opposite way, declaring that the new strict-compliance law is constitutional.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Teresa Sanders, in a ruling on the Outlaw Dirty Money initiative, found that the strict-compliance law “does not unreasonably hinder” our rights.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Daniel Kiley, who is handling APS’ lawsuit trying to bounce the Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona initiative off the ballot, agreed.

“The Court sees no basis for the (Clean Energy) Committee’s assertion that such a (strict compliance) standard, applied by other courts in other jurisdictions with similar constitutional provisions, would impose an intolerable burden on the right to initiative in Arizona,” he wrote.

No basis, apparently, to suspect that our leaders are scheming to weaken our constitutional right to make laws they don’t like.

The fact that they suddenly toughened a legal standard used for 80 years?

This, just a few months after voters approving an initiative raising the minimum wage?

Mere coincidence, I’m sure.