Two Democratic Arizona state representatives engaged in disorderly conduct when they yelled at their colleagues across the aisle as those Republicans delayed a vote to repeal a 160-year-old abortion ban, the House Ethics Committee concluded.
The committee released its reports on June 4 and unanimously concluded that Reps. Oscar De Los Santos, of Laveen, and Analise Ortiz, of Phoenix, violated House rules on April 10 when they shouted “Shame!” “Wait for the vote!” and “Blood on your hands!” as he points to Republican lawmakers on the other side of the chamber.
The committee determined that De Los Santos, the House’s No. 2 Democrat, violated the chamber’s “debate rules” and that both he and Ortiz engaged in disorderly conduct by yelling at House members with “inappropriate and insulting language to impeach.” (her character”.
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The committee determined that De Los Santos and Ortiz had violated House Rule 1, damaging the institutional integrity of the chamber. It also concluded that De Los Santos violated Rule 18, on decorum and debate, and Rule 19, on impermissible debate, by beginning to shout before the House recess and without being recognized by the president, and by “using language personally “offensive to members.” of the house.”
Both lawmakers were also accused of undermining “the dignity and integrity of the House of Representatives and ’embarrassing’ the institution nationally.”
The committee forwarded its reports on both lawmakers to the House of Representatives to determine whether they should be disciplined and, if so, how.
Since expulsion requires a two-thirds vote in the chamber and Republicans only have a one-vote majority, there is no chance of either representative being expelled. But they could be formally censured, which only requires a majority vote.
In a joint statement sent to the Arizona Mirror, De Los Santos and Ortiz said they were speaking on behalf of their constituents when they shouted as Republicans delayed the vote to maintain the near-total ban on abortion.
“This entire process is nothing more than another Republican attempt to suppress speech with which they do not agree,” Ortiz and De Los Santos wrote. “They constantly abuse their power to silence dissent.”
Republican Reps. Barbara Parker and Jacqueline Parker, both of Mesa, and David Marshall of Snowflake, filed the complaints against De Los Santos and Ortiz on April 24, the same day the House finally voted to repeal the ban on abortion of 1864.
During a May 15 Ethics Committee hearing on the complaint, Barbara Parker accused representatives of inciting a “riot” and causing her and other lawmakers to fear for their safety.
The two Democratic lawmakers began yelling and pointing at Republicans in the House of Representatives as they walked toward them on April 10, after the Republican majority decided to delay a vote on whether to repeal a near-total ban on abortion that originated in 1864. A day earlier, the Arizona Supreme Court had ruled that the law, passed before it became a state, preempted a 2022 abortion restriction and was enforceable.
After yelling at Republicans as they left the chamber, De Los Santos and Ortiz interrupted an impromptu press group gathered around Rep. Matt Gress, a Phoenix Republican who had made the first unsuccessful attempt to repeal the law. The two accused Gress of not caring if women died and called him a liar because he had previously sponsored fetal personhood laws.
Both lawmakers submitted written responses to the complaints against them on May 1, in which the attorney representing them, Jim Barton, asked the committee to “protect the spirit of debate and the marketplace of ideas in the Arizona Legislature” by not interpret “The rules of decorum and civility preclude passionate debate.”
He also accused the representatives who filed the complaint of using hyperbole in saying that Ortiz and De Los Santos attempted to incite a riot when they did nothing to physically threaten any of their colleagues.
Both lawmakers declined to attend the May 15 hearing, sending Barton to answer the committee’s question in their place.
Barton wrote in responses that the representatives’ actions were driven by their belief that Republicans were delaying “the business of the people” on April 10.
But the committee ultimately decided that the lawmakers’ actions went beyond “passionate debate.”
The Ethics Committee concluded that ignoring “House rules presents a real and legitimate chilling effect on dialogue among elected officials on important matters of state policy and denigrates the House as an institution of government. The rules allow members to express their ideas knowing that doing so would be met with, at worst, orderly opposition.”
The committee went on to say that it cannot allow “violations of the rules of decorum and order to be characterized as anything other than disorderly conduct. Doing so would not only render the rules meaningless; “It would set an inappropriate and harmful precedent for this body as an institution.”
The committee noted in its report that neither Ortiz nor De Los Santos disputed the facts of the complaint, admitting in their written responses that their actions were “loud” and “formally out of character.”
In their statement to the Mirror, Ortiz and De Los Santos said House Republicans tried again on June 4 to quell dissent “when they closed the gallery to the public and voted to send voters an unconstitutional, anti-immigrant, and discriminatory.” ”, referring to the approval of House Concurrent Resolution 2060.
They also noted that the Ethics Committee recently dismissed a complaint by Democrats against Republican Rep. Austin Smith of Wittman, accused of forging signatures on candidate petitions – which is a crime – when they are only accused of defying the rules of the Camera.
“We are focused on the work of the people, on finding real solutions to serious problems, not on these petty political games,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote.
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