By Anyon Fak-McDaniels, Ryan Myers, and Edward Nieman/Cronkite News
PHOENIX – Critics may call her the Veto Queen, but Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs signed at least 250 bills into law last legislative session.
Over the first regular session of the 57th Arizona Legislature, senators and members of the House of Representatives sifted through 1,854 bills, memorials, and resolutions that were introduced. Most of the bills Hobbs signed officially became law on Friday.
Hobbs’ office did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story, but on Sept. 11 at a press conference at a St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix, she praised Arizona legislators and their accomplishments over the session.
“We’re here today highlighting the nutrition assistance that we fought for in the budget, but that was Democrats fighting for that, but it was all of us working together addressing the needs of Arizonans,” she said. “And we had a lot of other accomplishments in this legislative session where we were able to address critical needs of Arizonans.”
As the governor celebrates her legislative triumphs and the Republican critics dismiss many of them as bloat, there are a number of laws that went into effect Friday that will have a real impact on Arizonans’ lives.
One law expanded the definition of animal cruelty. Better known as “Jerry’s Law,” named after one of 55 dogs seized from a Chandler home in 2023, SB 1658 establishes an owner’s intentional, knowing, or reckless failure to provide adequate medical attention to prevent a domestic animal under their custody or control from unreasonable suffering, as well as expands what counts as a proper shelter for dogs that primarily reside outdoors.
“The immediate impact is going to be on the most egregious cases,” Dr. Steven Hansen, president and CEO of Arizona Humane Society, said before he referenced the high-profile “Chandler 55” animal cruelty case two years prior that inspired this bill.
Hansen said that he feels encouraged by the law, which allows judges to work quickly in these cases.
“Which then allows police departments to move quickly,” he said. “And then our partnership to go in and take care of those animals in a much faster manner.”
The Arizona Humane Society Cruelty Investigators responded to 10,000 cases of suspected abuse in 2024. If you notice an animal that is limping, missing patches of fur, is being beaten by its owner, or see any other signs that an animal may be mistreated, you can reach out to the Arizona Humane Society to report it.
Age verification for adult content stirs controversy
Civil rights advocates have raised serious concerns about Arizona’s porn law, worrying that it violates the First Amendment. The law, HB 2112, requires Arizonans to provide identification for age verification to access adult content online.
Starting Friday, users have had to provide digital identification, such as a driver’s license or credit card, to access adult content sites. The law has led to a huge spike in web searches for “VPN.” VPN stands for virtual private network, which is a private server that online users can remotely connect to.
Online users who connect to a VPN can mask their IP address, which reveals their network’s location.
Because VPN servers can be located anywhere, a connected device can appear to be from anywhere in the world, which can circumvent location-based restrictions.
Republican representatives said they pushed the bill so that minors could not access explicit, unsafe content.
Rep. Nick Kupper, R-Surprise, in his first session as a state legislator, became the face of this bill. He was a prime sponsor, a father of four who said he’s taken a first-hand stance in wanting to shield young people from explicit content.
“It was my signature piece of legislation,” Kupper said. “This is just an extra layer of protection to assist parents.”
A 2018 study by the National Library of Medicine cited that one in five youth has been exposed to unwanted explicit material.
Kupper said this issue was a challenge for legislators to tackle because of how prevalent pornography is, forcing a broad approach to limiting its ease of access.
“This is sort of a blanket protection,” Kupper said. “That isn’t perfect, but it adds to existing protections that parents can do as well.”
Arizona’s porn law has come with pushback. A leading giant in the industry, Pornhub, announced Thursday it would block users from Arizona.
“The best and most effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to identify users at the source: by their device, or account on the device, and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification,” the company wrote in a statement. “This means users would only get verified once, through their operating system, not on each age-restricted site.”
This approach, the statement added, would reduce privacy risks to users and make it easier for regulators to enforce.
Currently, 25 states have passed laws that establish age verification for adult content, and according to its website, Pornhub has blocked access to 21 of them and intends to “continue to block access to Pornhub in more states that have passed age verification laws.”
Darrell Hill, the policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, said that the law could be used to target unintended audiences.
“These laws have the ability to impact non-sexual content,” Hill said. “It uses very vague and expansive language to define what material is harmful to minors. A parent may subjectively believe content about transgender lifestyles of LGBTQ+ people is harmful to minors.”
People can sue any site that publishes content that is more than one-third sexual material, including on social media. Hill worries the bill will cause limitations on speech and other forms of constitutionally protected expression due to its vague language.
“There’s a real danger the way this law is written of silencing First Amendment activity that really has no adult content in it,” Hill said. “It’s really kind of a government surveillance system. That’s very troubling toward our civil liberties or privacy and our First Amendment rights.”
For critics concerned about user privacy, a clause is in place to protect it. The law includes a provision allowing fines up to $10,000 if an adult site retains or transmits identifying information.
Ideally, the age verification process would start with the device itself, as Kupper said. However, this law is not ironclad and could be evaded by workarounds such as using a parent’s ID.
“It’s kind of just the start in a way, of doing a better job protecting kids online,” Kupper said. “How else can we tighten this up while not violating any adults’ rights?”
Putting dyslexia at the forefront
Another law that went into effect on Friday is HB 2170, which brings childhood dyslexia to the forefront of special education learning in Arizona.
Under the new law, when any student is found to need special education services, their Individualized Education Program will indicate if they’ve been diagnosed with dyslexia.
“It’s really putting dyslexia at the forefront in a way that we haven’t done before,” said Juliet Barnett, a professor of Special Education at Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching Innovation at Arizona State University. “It’s really the recognition of dyslexia that’s being targeted in this bill, and it has a lot of benefits.”
A study done by the Arizona Department of Education Dyslexia Handbook in 2018 estimated that 1 in 5 children in the state struggle with some form of dyslexia, a number also used by the International Dyslexia Association.
HB 2170 didn’t state how the changes to dyslexia awareness would be implemented, making Barnett doubtful about its effectiveness.
“The legislation doesn’t necessarily indicate that there’s going to be any sort of implementation changes,” Barnett said. “That IEP team of professionals, educators and psychologists is conducting the assessment, and the parents still have to determine the eligibility.”
Barnett said the responsibility will fall on the schools to shape programs that will maximize students’ learning capabilities and prepare teachers to educate students with learning disabilities.
“This bill is just a start,” she said. “What really needs to be at the forefront is what will actually change outcomes.”
Raising the age to purchase tobacco
Despite some of the significant changes this slate of laws brings to Arizona, some say it will be business as usual for them, such as Greg Centrone, the co-owner of Bud’s Glass Joint.
Bud’s Glass Joint is located inside a grass-green house and festooned with multicolored neon signs in the windows of his smoke shop in Downtown Phoenix. Centrone and the owners of other smokeshops in Phoenix seemed unconcerned.
Inside, Centrone stood behind the counters next to shelves of smoking apparati and nicotine pouches. He remained indifferent when he learned about SB 1247, a law that raised the age limit for tobacco products in Arizona to 21, which went into effect on Friday.
“Federal law has been 21 for quite a few years now; it hasn’t really changed,” Centrone said, with an impassive look. “It’s really not going to change anything for us.”
