The Arizona Supreme Court handed Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap a major victory on Tuesday in his ongoing battle to maintain his election responsibilities.
In its new order, the Grand Canyon State’s highest court dissolved a stay (“pause”) issued by the Arizona Court of Appeals on an April ruling by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney. In his decision, Blaney determined that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (MCBOS) “acted unlawfully and exceeded its statutory authority by seizing [Heap’s] personnel, systems and equipment and refusing to return them.”
The entire dispute between Heap and the board can be traced back to a month before the 2024 elections, when then-outgoing Recorder Stephen Richer — a known opponent to election integrity efforts — struck a new Shared Services Agreement (SSA) with the MCBOS to effectively strip key election responsibilities and resources from the recorder’s office and give them to the board. As The Federalist previously reported, this included giving the MCBOS control over Heap’s IT staff and finances and a greater role in early voting, a process typically overseen by the recorder’s office.
Upon entering office in January 2025, Heap attempted to negotiate a new SSA with the MCBOS to re-acquire his office’s prior election powers. He ultimately filed a lawsuit in June 2025 after months of resistance by the board.
In siding with Heap, Blaney recognized Heap’s statutory authority to carry out the election responsibilities delegated to his office by Arizona law and that the MCBOS has a “nondiscretionary duty to fund all necessary expenses of the Recorder” as expressed in the current statute. He further required the MCBOS to return all IT staff and resources under the recorder’s control prior to the October 2024 SSA to Heap or “immediately fund the replacement of these personnel and items” so that he may execute his legal duties as recorder.
A panel for the Arizona Court of Appeals paused Blaney’s order last month at the request of the MCBOS. The judges ruled that it violated the Purcell principle, a doctrine that says courts should avoid altering election rules too close to an election.
In lifting that stay, Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer ruled that the appellate court “abused its discretion in entering the Stay Order.” She further determined that “the statutory delegation of authority to ‘the county recorder or other officer in charge of elections’ is ‘the general provision permitting designation by the county recorder of another officer to exercise that function when necessary,'” and rejected the MCBOS’s argument that the legal text “authorizes ‘the Board … [to] authorize the task to be performed by the Board appointed Maricopa County Elections Director.'”
“[T]he Board cannot use budgetary authority to usurp an independently elected officer’s statutory functions. And to the extent the Board may have attempted to do so, Purcell cannot now be invoked to permit it. Specifically, allowing the Board to appoint the officer would supplant the Legislature’s direction that the Recorder perform this function,” Timmer wrote.
The Arizona Supreme Court additionally accepted a “12-point interim operational protocol” proposed by Heap to “modify the terms of the Stay Order and Injunction Orders in accordance with the protocol” for the state’s upcoming primary elections.
In a new statement, Heap heralded the high court’s decision as a “decisive victory for the rule of law.” He further indicated that his office “is ready to implement the Court’s order and deliver secure, lawful, and professional elections for the people of Maricopa County.”
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