Protesters banned from AZ Legislature lose round in court

A federal judge has declined to order Arizona legislative leaders to let members of Living United for Change in Arizona back into the state Capitol, leaving the group without a ruling on whether lawmakers exceeded their authority. The decision affects people who travel to Phoenix to testify, protest, or observe committee hearings, including members of statewide advocacy organizations with ties to communities across Arizona. For now, Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Steve Montenegro’s restrictions remain unresolved in court, while the Legislature’s next session could bring the dispute back.

U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich dismissed the group’s request for an immediate injunction because the legislative session ended June 12. LUCHA members filed the lawsuit in April, seeking access to the House and Senate buildings for the remainder of the session. Since lawmakers are no longer holding those hearings, Brnovich said an order allowing the plaintiffs to attend them would have no practical effect. The judge therefore treated the request as legally moot, without deciding whether the leaders acted unlawfully.

Brnovich also did not decide whether the bans violated the protesters’ First Amendment rights. She left open another major question, whether Petersen and Montenegro are protected by absolute immunity because they were acting in their official legislative roles. The ruling consequently provides no definitive answer about how much power legislative leaders have to remove people from committee hearings, exclude them from Capitol buildings, or prevent them from returning on later days.

The case grew out of protests at hearings on two Republican-sponsored Senate bills. One was SB 1635, introduced by Sen. John Kavanagh of Fountain Hills. It would have made it a crime to warn another person that law enforcement was seeking them if the warning was intended to delay or prevent an arrest. The bill did not pass the Legislature. The second measure, SB 1055, sponsored by Sen. Wendy Rogers of Flagstaff, would have required state and local police to notify immigration authorities when they arrested someone described in the bill as unlawfully present in the country. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs later vetoed that legislation.

According to Jacqueline Mendez Soto, an attorney for the banned LUCHA members, some participants received written notice from Petersen saying they were barred from the Senate for the rest of the session because of disorderly behavior. Soto said another LUCHA member was prohibited from entering the House after allegedly engaging in activity in public areas outside the Capitol. She asked the judge to require Petersen and Montenegro to withdraw the restrictions, arguing that the bans unlawfully limited the protesters’ constitutional rights.

The Republican leaders offered a sharply different account. Their attorney, Thomas Basile, said the lawsuit omitted important details about what happened during the hearings. He said Rogers, who chaired the Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee during the SB 1635 hearing, had warned attendees that the packed agenda would limit the number of speakers on each side and give each person 90 seconds. Most people followed the rules, Basile said, but the plaintiffs began a loud chant that interrupted the committee’s work and forced a recess.

Basile described a separate disruption during the SB 1055 hearing, saying protesters used whistles and shouting until the proceedings were derailed and they were escorted out. He also said the House-banned woman used a bullhorn just inches from a legislator’s head on a sidewalk outside the Capitol. The leaders argued that these actions justified preventing similar disruptions in the future. In their view, maintaining order and security was part of the legislative job, the restrictions were reasonable, and officials did not have to wait for even greater disruption before limiting access to a nonpublic forum.

The judge did not weigh those competing descriptions of the protests. Instead, she focused on the legal requirements for an injunction. Plaintiffs generally must show that they suffered an injury, that the challenged government action caused it, and that a court order would remedy it. Because the session had ended, Brnovich said the requested order could not now repair the specific loss of access alleged in the lawsuit.

The ruling was not a complete defeat for LUCHA. Brnovich said the plaintiffs may be able to file the case again when lawmakers return in January, but only if they provide a specific and credible plan to engage in similar protest activity. They would need to describe future speech in concrete terms, including details about when, where, to whom, or under what circumstances it would occur. That requirement is intended to show that the protesters face a real possibility of being banned again, rather than merely speculating that the restrictions could recur. Soto said no decision had been made about whether the plaintiffs would pursue the case. Until then, people seeking to participate in Arizona’s legislative process have no clear court ruling defining the limits of legislative leaders’ power to exclude them.