Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Partisan Judge,Who Also Ruled Against Kari Lake,Was Just Overturned By The AZ Supremes.

The AZGOP shouldn’t have been sanctioned for a 2020 election lawsuit, Supreme Court rules.

Sanctions like these are a ‘real and present danger’ to the rule of law in AZ, the court said.

The Arizona Republican Party’s lawsuit challenging the post-election hand-count process in 2020 wasn’t groundless or filed in bad faith, and the party doesn’t have to pay attorney’s fees for the Secretary of State’s Office, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.

The unanimous ruling overturns decisions by a trial court judge and the Arizona Court of Appeals that ordered the AZGOP — and its attorneys — to pay legal fees for the state to defend the case.

“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,” Justice John Lopez wrote for the Supreme Court. “Even if done inadvertently and with the best of intentions, such sanctions present a real and present danger to the rule of law.”

The Arizona Republican Party celebrated the ruling in a statement provided to the Arizona Mirror.

“This ruling reaffirms the fundamental legal principle that raising questions about the interpretation and application of election laws is a legitimate use of the judicial system, not a groundless or bad faith action,” the party said. “We remain committed to ensuring that election laws are followed precisely, upholding the integrity of our electoral process.”

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.

Hannah said the most telling fact may be that the AZGOP sued to block Maricopa County’s election canvass after the hand count showed a perfect match with the machine count of ballots, writing that it would “create a cloud over the legitimacy of this election and its results” if the court let the canvass happen.

“This is why the Court raised the question whether the plaintiff brought suit in order to ‘cast false shadows on this election’s legitimacy.’ Undercutting the election’s legitimacy by raising ‘questions’ is exactly what the plaintiff did in this passage,” Hannah wrote. “It is a threat to the rule of law posing as an expression of concern. It is direct evidence of bad faith.”

The three-judge appeals panel unanimously agreed, writing that the AZGOP first sought to challenge the hand-count audit procedures but then dropped that in order to block Maricopa County from certifying its election results, belying the true purpose of the lawsuit.

“The court system exists to hear legitimate legal disputes, not for airing political disputes or grievances,” the appeals court wrote.

But the Supreme Court said both of the lower courts got it exactly wrong when they determined that the Arizona Republican Party’s lawsuit was both “groundless” and “not made in good faith.”

Writing for the unanimous court, Lopez said that the trial and appeals courts improperly concluded that, although the AZGOP’s arguments were “a long shot,” they raised valid questions about how post-election hand-counts are conducted under a vote center model and whether the Elections Procedures Manual conflicts with state law.

Lopez also keyed in on the rationale that the lawsuit was “political” as a reason to sanction the Arizona Republican Party and its attorneys. It’s impossible to divorce politics from law in election-related cases, the Supreme Court ruled, and subjecting attorneys to a higher risk of sanctions because election cases are politically motivated “intolerably chills citizens and their attorneys precisely in an arena where we can least afford to silence them.”

“Our courts should be cautious that, in their zeal to ensure that election challenges are properly grounded in fact and law under the guise of defending an ‘election’s legitimacy,’ they do not inadvertently inflict real damage to our republic by slamming the courthouse door on citizens and their counsel legitimately seeking to vindicate rights, which is also important to maintaining public confidence in elections,” he wrote.

Noting that Arizona courts — including the Supreme Court — have improperly conflated the “absence of good faith with the presence of bad faith,” the courts have effectively made part of the statute that mandates fee awards irrelevant. So, the justices concluded, there needs to be a clear definition for what “not made in good faith” means as it relates to sanctions.

The new standard is that a claim must both be groundless and the plaintiff knows it is groundless — or is indifferent to that fact — and pursues it anyway. Rather than evaluate “good faith” with a subjective standard and “groundlessness” with an objective standard, Lopez wrote, courts should use the standard set in the Arizona Rule of Civil Procedures to evaluate whether a claim is made in good faith.

“The virtue of this approach is that it extricates our courts from the morass of attempting to discern the subjective motives of attorneys and parties in bringing a case and avoids conflating motive and the objective reasonableness of litigation conduct when considering a fees award,” Lopez wrote.


https://azmirror.com/2024/05/02/the...20-election-lawsuit-supreme-court-rules/

This is the hack who ruled against Kari Lake.Below are his contributions to the Demonrat Party through the money laundering scheme known as Act Blue.

Judge John Hannah partisan hack.

Those donations need to be reviewed to determine whether he actually made them. O'Keefe, like him or not, has already shown that people have had staggering total sums donated under their name. It is a known laundering method.

This what happens when you let Decades of Heb’s Run your Financial System..

The Ink Rolls the Worthless Paper filling the pockets of the Worthless Grifter’s ..

NGO’s become the Real Government expanding like the Big Bang Theory..

Their All Singing the New Hit Molon Abbe

Hahahaha Hahahaha

I love the Reruns of Gunsmoke

Good post... Thanks...

Lol, I wonder what our resident schitbags will have to say.

Final vindication does not matter. Damage has already been done...

On both sides honestly. Too many on our side that believe it was a fair straight up election. Its utter bullchit

rte,
Thanks for posting.

You aren't wrong.

Straight out of the playbook.

Yes. This is all orchestrated confusion to get past the next election cycle...then, in the famous words of Hillary, "What does it matter, now?"

Count the damned votes! That's where the proof is... or isn't.

It shows just how deeply compromised the section system was and how the legal system was bias to protect the compromised nature of the system.

Interesting................I haven't come across this on main stream media. Kinda like Sydney Powell being cleared.

Sure would be nice if someone came out with a better more obvious resume system for electing judges. Higher standards right out of the gate pre election or appointment would be great as well. Then again they are attorneys, when do they ever police their own.
Finally, some consequence for a judge making a mockery of justice being blind. (Somewhere before the 3rd instance of idiocy)
Wish list for the betterment of all.

Osky

Speaking of judges.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_by_judicial_appointments#:~:text=Ronald%20Reagan%20appointed%20383%20federal,by%20Bill%20Clinton%20with%20378.

Surprised me, but attorneys do police their own fairly well up until they get coronation as a prosecutor/judge.

Steve Lehto has several videos on attorney misconduct.

https://youtube.com/@stevelehto?si=rpghq7alwq2lJ7T8

Most everyone misses the blaring truth of ALL of these election challenges in ALL the courts they have been filed in.

The blaring truth is this: You can't win elections in the court system after the election results have been posted.

Prosecutors- - - - -failed lawyers who couldn't make the cut in private practice and have to suck on the public tit to survive.

Judges- - - - -failed prosecutors who manage to get themselves elected or appointed to run the schidtshow that the "justice" system has evolved into.

They're all lawyers- - - - -the sleaziest bunch of inbred fudge packers in the world, and have been since the dawn of recorded history!

"First, we kill all the lawyers!"
Shakespeare

You can bet the Arizona democRATs are going to fight tooth and nail to keep any questions about the validity of the 2020 election buried. Regardless of what the Arizona supreme court says.

It's always been my stand that anyone at anytime can questions the results of an election and it's up to the government that held the election to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the election was fair and honest. Apparently, this is a hill just too big for some folks to climb. Or they choose not to climb it. If so, what are they hiding ??

kwg