Political Activity on Campus

The Arizona Attorney General has issued new guidelines on the use of community college district resources for political activity.

According to A.R.S. §15-1408, district “personnel, equipment, materials, buildings or other resources” may not be used “for the purpose of influencing the outcomes of elections.”

In the guidelines, the Attorney General asserts that the “test for determining whether activities using community college district resources are designed to influence the outcome of an election is whether the activities further a communication that, taken as a whole, unambiguously urges a person to vote in a particular manner.”

The guidelines list both permitted and prohibited activities. For instance, a community college district may:

• rent or lease buildings to “partisan and ballot measure groups on the same basis and conditions as other groups who are permitted” to use those facilities;
• host nonpartisan forums and public candidate debates “for the purpose of educating voters about issues or candidates”; for contested candidate debates, however, “there must be at least two candidates invited,” the debate may not promote one candidate over the other, and “viewpoint neutral objective criteria” must be used to determine which candidates may participate.

The guidelines also detail activities that are outlawed under A.R.S. §15-1408. While they allow the use of facilities for debates and forums, no campaign signs or “any item that advocates for or against a candidate, recall, initiative, referendum, bond election, budget override or any ballot measure shall be placed in or on community college buildings.”

Additionally, employees and board members may not use school mailboxes, telephones or e-mail accounts “to distribute a communication for the purpose of influencing the outcomes of elections.”

While community college district employees must be careful to observe the prohibitions the guidelines prescribe as to the use of facilities, they otherwise enjoy the rights of citizens to engage in political activity.

The guidelines hold, for example, that employees may engage in that activity (such as circulating petitions and distributing election literature) during off-duty time, even at “district-sponsored extracurricular activities, such as athletic events,” provided they are “not on-duty or assisting with supervision or organization of the extracurricular activities.”

Likewise, district employees may “express their opinions or preferences on elections . . . while off-duty, as long as such expression does not occur within a classroom or other instructional setting or community college district board meeting.”

Under the guidelines, an employee is “on-duty” when he or she is “working for the community college district, engaged in community college district business or acting on behalf of the community college district.

“On-duty time includes time spent supervising or organizing, or assisting in the supervision or organization of a community college district-sponsored extracurricular event, such as an athletic event.”

To read the Attorney General’s guidelines on the use of community college district resources to influence the outcome of elections, visit the Office of General Counsel at www.maricopa.edu/legal, and click “Civil Rights.”

Published in the Fall 2007 Edition of In Brief