Judge rejects Arizona senator’s request for a broad restraining order against reporter

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An Arizona trial judge rejected a proposed injunction against a reporter, who had investigated the legitimacy of a state senator’s claimed residency by visiting her homes. The lawmaker, who previously had a restraining order granted against the reporter, claimed the reporter had harassed her. 

Key Players

State Sen. Wendy Rogers (R), who has three homes in Arizona, has been accused of skirting state residency requirements, which say that state lawmakers must reside in the district they represent. She claims a 700-square-foot Flagstaff mobile home as her official residence. Her district encompasses Payson, Flagstaff, and Show Low.  She was first elected to the Arizona Senate in 2020, and was named on the Anti-Defamation League’s list of extremists on the ballot in 2022.

Camryn Sanchez, a reporter who covers the state senate for the Arizona Capitol Times, visited Rogers’s two non-Flagstaff homes to investigate whether she was living there. 

Further Details

The Arizona Constitution and state law affirm that state lawmakers must reside in the district they represent. If they have multiple homes, their district residence must be fixed and where they have the “intention of returning when absent,” AZ Central reported. This clause allows elected officials to decide which of their homes is their primary residence.

Rogers has owned a single-family home in Tempe for years, which was listed as her official residence prior to her purchase of the Flagstaff mobile home. Additionally, she bought another home in Chandler in January 2023. Both Tempe and Chandler border Phoenix and are outside of her district. 

On April 18, Sanchez rang the doorbell at Rogers’s Tempe and Chandler homes. Rogers was not at either home, but footage from her doorbell camera captured Sanchez at the front doors. 

In her petition to Magistrate Amy Criddle, Rogers cited the home visits and Sanchez’s refusal to leave her alone on the Senate floor. In February 2023, the reporter had “persisted with questioning [Rogers] even when rebuffed,” which caused Sanchez to be banned by the state Senate from approaching Rogers’s desk, AZ Central reported. Additionally, Rogers claimed that she feared Sanchez might “lash out and physically harm” her. She sought a court restraining order against Sanchez in all places. 

Criddle granted an injunction against harassment, but took issue with the February directive that Sanchez had to avoid Rogers, saying that Sanchez was within her rights to approach the lawmaker. Instead, the injunction only applied to Rogers’s homes. 

After the injunction was announced, the Arizona Capitol Times clarified that Sanchez had been working on a story on whether Rogers falsely claimed the Flagstaff mobile home as her primary residence for political purposes. The investigation was also relevant because Rogers’ had claimed $19,000 in expenses for food and travel. Arizona lawmakers who live in counties other than Maricopa, where the State Capitol is located, are able to charge for many travel-related expenses, but those in Maricopa receive a set stipend. If Rogers was primarily living in either her Tempe or Chandler homes, both of which are in Maricopa County, then she may have potentially overcharged taxpayers thousands of dollars by not settling for the set stipend. 

The Capitol Times sharply criticized the order as an attack on Free Speech, saying that the petition was about “silencing the press in direct contravention of the First Amendment,” and stressing that Sanchez’s actions were well within her rights as a citizen and a journalist. 

This incident is not the first time Rogers was at the center of controversy. She is a denier of the 2020 presidential election, a member of the far-right militia the Oath Keepers, and a proponent of antisemitic and white supremacist conspiracies like the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, claims that there is an “active, ongoing and covert effort to replace white populations in current white-majority countries.” 

The great replacement was a central motivator for the 2022 Buffalo, New York, mass shooting, when an 18-year-old white supremacist killed 10 Black people at a supermarket. Although this episode was widely acknowledged as a hate crime, including by the shooter himself, Rogers seemed to allege on social media that the shooting was coordinated by the federal government, which prompted a 24-3 vote in the Arizona Senate to launch an Ethics Committee probe into her comments. However, the investigation did not result in any action. 

Before these comments, Rogers was successfully censured by her colleagues after she spoke during the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) in February 2022. AFPAC was organized by Nick Fuentes, a widely known white supremacist commentator who has denied the Holocaust, praised Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler, advocated for the United States to become a Christian theocracy, and proudly propagated antisemitism. 

In her speech at AFPAC, Rogers called for the construction of a “newly built set of gallows,” which could be used to “make an example of these traitors who have betrayed our country.” During and after her speech, Rogers dubbed Fuentes the “most persecuted man in America” and said he, the crowd, and the other speakers at the conference were patriots standing up against tyranny.

Outcome 

Hearing held on Sanchez’s challenge of injunction

Because the initial court hearing was held without Sanchez’s notice or presence,, the Arizona Capitol Times announced it would challenge the order on behalf of Sanchez. 

Judge Howard Grodman, a Democrat, presided over the hearing on May 10, during which both sides presented their arguments.  That same day he ruled in favor of Sanchez, declaring that ruling that her conduct did not amount to harassment, The Associated Press reported. 

“I don’t think there is a series of events directed at Sen. Rogers that would cause a reasonable person to be seriously alarmed, annoyed or harassed even if she in fact was,” Grodman said after a hearing in Flagstaff Justice Court. “The strongest point is investigative reporting is a legitimate purpose. lt just is.”

Attorneys for Sanchez said the Arizona Capitol Times was pleased with the decision.

“We stand firmly behind Ms. Sanchez and all our reporters in the exercise of their rights under the First Amendment and we are pleased that the court recognized that this injunction was improper,” her attorneys stated. “We look forward to continuing in our work reporting the news and are glad to put this issue behind us.”

Attorneys for Rogers did not respond to a request for comment. As of May 16, 2023, there were no further developments.