Amicus Briefs
Sun City Home Owners Association v. Arizona Corporation Commission
CASE SUMMARY
This amicus brief asked the Arizona Supreme Court to interpret the statutory or regulatory texts for itself rather than deferring to the interpretation of an administrative agency. NCLA argued that the Arizona Court of Appeals erred in its January 2020 ruling by giving “extreme deference” to the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) in violation of both the state and federal constitutions. The ruling led then-Chief Judge Michael J. Brown to pen a sharp dissent calling out the majority’s error in “giving virtually absolute deference” to ACC.
Agency deference requires judges to abandon their duty of independent judgment and violates the due process clauses of the Arizona Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by commanding judicial bias toward one litigant. In this case, it compelled judges to abandon their independence by giving controlling weight to ACC’s opinion of what a statute meant, not because of the persuasiveness of ACC’s argument, but rather based solely on the fact that this administrative entity had addressed the interpretive question before the Court.
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