The legality of Protect Arizona NOW's initiative, The Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act, was upheld by Judge Mark Armstrong's ruling of August 30. The lawsuit, one of two that have been filed against the initiative by Service Employees International Union/AFL-CIO, et al., named Secretary of State Jan Brewer, Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, and Maricopa County Supervisors as defendants. PAN Chairman, Kathy McKee, was named as Real Party in Interest.
    States McKee, "When I received the complaint late Friday for a hearing the following Tuesday, we were in quite a bind. Our staff attorney from Tucson was not available. We have some brilliant out-of-state attorneys helping us on other related matters, but we've always had a problem finding Arizona attorneys to step up to the plate. The thought of appearing pro se rather than allowing a nuisance suit like this to prevail through default was horrific. Although having a smart, conscientious judge helps, thank goodness a knight-in-shining-armor, attorney John Acer, took this case at literally the 11th hour – on a Sunday afternoon before Tuesday's hearing. Despite just having had bilateral eye surgery that week, suffering immensely from neuralgic pain, and up to his neck in other legal cases, John's strong devotion to the people of Arizona and commitment to justice moved me to tears when he agreed to take this case against such overwhelming odds."

  Acer, who attended Princeton University and the University of Iowa for degrees in electrical engineering, received his J.D. from Arizona State University in 1971 and has practiced law in Arizona for over 30 years. He states, "My reluctance to accept this case wasn't fear-based at all, but more related to my eye surgery, pain syndrome, and previous commitments such as being a delegate to the Republican National Convention that presented an inconceivable time crunch for me. Nevertheless, it was obvious PAN's initiative might be in real trouble without adequate representation at that hearing, so I promised Kathy that I would do everything I possibly could to protect the interests of the approximately 192,000 signatories of that petition and the over 2 million Arizona voters who want to vote on the PAN initiative in November–and certainly want their votes counted. Obviously with more time, I could have done more, but I doubt if the outcome could have been better."

    Adds McKee, "My worst fears were later validated in court that none of the defendants would argue against any of the merits (or in this case, lack of merits) of the plaintiffs' complaint (plaintiffs admitted they had no case law or Arizona statutes to support their position, largely citing Oregon and California cases).  Nor would any of the government official defendants argue even against the plaintiffs' obvious lack of standing, or support our motion for a short continuance (since our attorney had less than 2 days to prepare a defense for the 75-80% of the state who support us), or oppose stipulation of unqualified paid circulators, or even oppose plaintiffs' request to not have the votes counted on our Initiative until all legal challenges are resolved."
    Contemplating the obstacles that PAN's Proposition 200 has overcome, McKee continues, "First, PAN was the subject of a vicious hostile takeover attempt from an avaricious Washington group that publicly tried to present itself as our friend, a ruse that still appears to be ongoing. Then we have two lawsuits, including this one, filed by a predominantly out-of-state union represented largely by Washington and San Francisco lawyers.  It looks as though we're going to need a National Advisory Board of thousands  – and dozens more knights in shining armor – to adequately combat all these interlopers who are sucking money out of this state by the millions, while others invade Arizona to try to suppress our democratic process with costly lawsuits."

Explains McKee, "If the people of this state want this initiative on the ballot in November -- and want their votes counted – they're going to have to pay for it.   What needs to be emphasized again is that PAN has not received a single cent from the hundreds of thousands of dollars these Washington groups say they've donated to us, as self-proclaimed friends, so we don't have the money right now to go to the Supreme Court."
    Concludes McKee, "Not for one nanosecond do I think that the lawsuits will stop here. We have won resoundingly at the trial-court level, but the next stop is the Arizona Supreme Court, where SEIU announced in court multiple times they're headed.  Then there'll be the post-election legal battles – and for what?  Just to get our laws enforced.   After this is over, I guess we'll have to work on an initiative to out-source all the useless government bureaucrats who are going along with trying to kill democracy in Arizona and America.  When no viable candidate runs against them, the system doesn't work to vote them out."