Week in Review: A Week Full of Winning

No more excuses.

Law-abiding Americans, especially in Arizona, have sat and watched their cities fail to act on the homelessness crisis plaguing their streets. But a major U.S. Supreme Court decision this week strikes down the lower court ruling that cities like Phoenix used as cover to avoid enforcing the law. And the decision underscores the need for Prop 312, a first-in-the-nation reform on Arizona’s 2024 general election ballot that compensates the residents, businesses, and property owners paying the price for government inaction.

As Goldwater VP for Legal Affairs Timothy Sandefur writes, this week’s landmark ruling “opens the door to working toward cures” to alleviate the crisis.

Read more here.

 A Step Toward Protecting Democracy

Most of us learned how laws should be made in grade school: proposed legislation goes to Congress first, then the president, who can sign it into law.

In reality, most of the rules we obey today are created by unelected employees of the regulatory agencies often called the “Administrative State,” and due to a legal theory called “deference,” courts typically go along with whatever these bureaucrats want. So, for instance, imagine that bureaucrats on a regulatory board refuse to approve a barber’s permit to cut hair. Because of deference, that barber would have no legal recourse—no matter how qualified he is or how many customers want the services he provides.

That’s unconstitutional, and this week, the Supreme Court struck down “deference” at the federal level after the Goldwater Institute urged the justices to do so—just our latest action in a long, successful history of reining in the Administrative State. Goldwater has already helped numerous Americans beat the bureaucratic bullies, and we’ve passed our landmark law to end state-court deference in multiple states around the country. Now, this week’s ruling marks an important step toward making government agencies more accountable both to the law and to the American people.

Read more here. 

Goldwater Defeats ‘Prevailing Wage’ Mandates

Small businesses, minorities, younger workers, and taxpayers—all suffer under “prevailing wage” mandates that force regulations and bureaucratic tape down businesses’ throats.

Those mandates are illegal too—but Phoenix and Tucson officials adopted them at labor unions’ behest to strong-arm public-works contractors into paying their employees above-market wages.

Goldwater wasn’t going to let government hand unions yet another tool to raise labor costs and charge taxpayers more. We sued both Phoenix and Scottsdale to stop these illegal mandates, and this week, we won.

The court’s decision is a victory for taxpayers, businesses, and workers—and a warning to local governments that brazenly flout the law: not on our watch.

Read more here.