By Rosemarie C. McCormack.
When the U.S. Supreme Court decided Dobbs in 2022, Arizona had several conflicting abortion-related statutes and injunctions in place. During this post-Roe uncertainty, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs issued an Executive Order that vested all prosecutions of abortion-related offenses in the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. Attorney General Kris Mayes then announced she would protect Arizonans’ rights to reproductive healthcare. But was this non-prosecution policy a critical stop-gap measure or an executive branch overreach? This Comment argues that the Hobbs-Mayes Policy combines aspects of the progressive prosecution movement and state supersession power to create a new prosecutorial strategy: “progressive supersession.” Full Article.