PHOENIX — About 100,000 Arizonans who got their extra federal unemployment benefits cut off early during COVID by then-Gov. Doug Ducey because he instead wanted to get them to go to work at restaurants and hotels are not going to get the funds they lost.
Without comment, the Arizona Supreme Court has refused to overturn lower court rulings that Ducey broke state laws when he unilaterally halted the extra $300 a week the unemployed were getting in 2021. That ruling ends any chance of those affected ever recovering the money they would have gotten had the governor not ended the federal program 58 days early.
The new order rests on the decision of the state Court of Appeals that the governor acted within his authority. It does not, however, address a key argument made by the attorney for the workers that Ducey admitted he cut the program short — and denied those unemployed the extra federal dollars that came with state participation — not to save money but to instead help certain Arizona employers find the workers that they needed.
