April 14, 2011 09:10 PM UTC

Arizona continues to use tax credits to advance far right wing agenda.

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• by: DaftPunk

Last week you read about the Supreme Court decision which held that taxpayers do not have standing to sue against government tax credits which fund religious education because tax credits do not count as government spending.

This week, Governor Brewer signed HB 2384 which, in addition to prohibiting any state funding for abortion training (a sticky issue at the OB/GYN residencies at least at the U of A hospital I imagine), prohibits any charitable organization which participates in the Arizona Working Poor Tax Credit program from doing abortions.

It’s ironic to consider the language used in these two cases:

From Justice Kagan’s dissent in Winn v. ACSTO:

One STO advertises that “[w]ith Arizona’s scholarship tax credit, you can send children to our community’s [religious] day schools and it won’t cost you a dime!” Another urges potential donors to “imagine giving [to charity] with someone else’s money. . . . Stop Imagining, thanks to Arizona tax laws you can!”

And from the Arizona Planned Parenthood site:

Your generous donation can be applied to the Arizona Working Poor Tax Credit. What this means to you is that in addition to a federal tax deduction, if you itemize your deductions and you contribute to Planned Parenthood in Arizona, you may be eligible for a dollar-for dollar state tax credit

Now, consider that in the first amendment jurisprudence that the SCOTUS eviscerated last week, the operative Flast decision allowed standing and access to the courts for taxpayers to sue the government over possibly unconstitutional expenditures in support of religion.  This is a more liberal view of standing than taxpayers generally have to sue.  Now that liberal standing disappears, under the holding that giving a taxpayer a tax credit for a religious donation is not the same as the government collecting that same money in taxes and then giving it to the same organization.

In cases which do not have first amendment establishment issues, access to the courts is even more restricted.  I’m not saying that there’s any constitutional issue with this new piece of legislation, but I see a disturbing trend developing in which the use of tax credits will allow money which would otherwise be collected as taxes to be funneled to whatever pet project legislators desire, and there will be no legal review available to challenge it.

I wish what happened in Arizona stayed in Arizona, but the way these conservative bills flourish is as test cases in one state, and we then see them sprouting up like weeds around the country, just like the 20 week “fetal pain” abortion bans.