WASHINGTON – Native Americans may face barriers to voting in general, but that is not enough to require that ballots mailed from the Navajo Nation get 10 extra days to be counted, a federal appeals court said Thursday.

The ruling by a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld a lower court that rejected the suit by six Navajo voters. The courts said the plaintiffs failed to show that their voting rights would be harmed by postal delays or helped by an extension – or even that they planned to vote by mail this election.

The ruling is the latest in a flurry of election challenges heard by the court in recent weeks. It was welcomed by election officials in northern Arizona who said an extension for Navajo ballots would be neither fair nor practical.

“I just don’t think it’s really feasible and we would want to do it for all voters, not just voters on the Navajo Nation,” said Coconino County Recorder Patty Hansen. “That to me would be not correct” because most of the county is rural, not just the part that is Navajo Nation land.

WASHINGTON – Arizona schools have long struggled with teacher shortages but the problem was made worse this year by COVID-19, which has led to more teachers quitting or taking leave, school officials said.

Just over 28% of teaching slots were still vacant several weeks into the 2020-2021 school year, up from 21% last year, according to an annual survey by the Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association.

The association, which included a question on the coronavirus for the first time this year, found that 464 teachers who retired this year or who took a year off from teaching said their primary reason for doing so was COVID-19.

“We’ve had a couple of resignations and it’s not 100% related to the work – it’s definitely COVID related,” said Dawn Anderson, the human resources director for the Flagstaff Unified School District. And Flagstaff is in relatively good shape when it comes to teacher vacancies overall, she said.

The survey of 145 school districts and charter schools around the state found that of the 751 teachers who quit before or shortly after the start of the school year, 326 said they left because of the pandemic. Another 138 teachers took an unpaid one-year leave of absence, citing COVID-19, the report said.

After 35 years in business, Tucson's beloved Cafe Poca Cosa announces plans to close due to coronavirus concerns and the corresponding economic downturn of Tucson's service industry. 

Owner Suzana Davila said after giving her "heart and soul" to Cafe Poca Cosa over the years, she is choosing to shut her restaurant down after experiencing "many months of great anxiety" because of the pandemic's impact on the cost of operating an eating establishment with limited occupancy.

“Clearly, this is not how I imagined my business would culminate. I always envisioned passing the business on to my hardworking children who have been actively involved in the business for many years”, said Davila. “The continued threat of Covid to the restaurant and hospitality industry is ever-present.  With fixed costs of doing business and rising food costs, along with restrictive seating limits, we just do not see a profitable way of continuing."

Originally located in a small space at Scott Avenue And Congress Street, Cafe Poca Cosa earned a name for itself serving fantastic Mexican culinary wonders that became a destination for foodies from around the world.  Davilla, with her sisters Marcela and Sandra, helped put Tucson on the culinary map long before UNESCO came calling.

"I feel incredibly privileged to have been part of our wonderful downtown for all these years," Davilla said.  "I would like to thank the people of Tucson for all the goodwill and assistance they have provided over the years."

Cafe Poca Cosa's sister restaurant, The Little One, remains open as a grab-and-go market with limited outdoor seating. 

GLENDALE – Melanie Boyle hung a hand-painted Black Lives Matter sign on her home in July to show her support for the movement and its demands for justice.

“I wanted to do this little act of putting up a sign and open more conversation about it in my area,” she said.

Conversations with her neighbors went well, with some also expressing support for BLM and a supporter of President Donald Trump who acknowledged the rights of Boyle’s family to display their opinions.

Then, in September, she got a different response. Her homeowner’s association, or HOA, sent her a violation notice.

HOAs have the power to dictate which signs and flags can be displayed in homeowners’ yards and on their houses, a power backed up by federal, state and local laws.

Boyle wasn’t having it. One street down from hers, the 36-year-old physician said, are six houses displaying Trump 2020 flags. If those are allowed, she thought, so should her cardboard sign.

Email threads, political signs and a violation notice

Staples of election season, political signs and banners clutter the sides of busy streets and pop up in yards across metro Phoenix. Throughout the year, some neighbors use flags and signs to show their allegiance to sports team logos or to show “Congrats! You Graduated!” signs.

A Phoenix attorney with expertise in HOAs said questions that arise in Boyle’s BLM sign case include First Amendment rights to use signs to speak your mind versus HOAs’ legal standing to regulate signs, and whether HOA policies are inconsistently applied.

A trail of emails shows Boyle’s attempts at clarification.

On Aug. 18, Boyle’s HOA in north Glendale, which is managed by Spectrum Association Management in Chandler, sent a mass email to residents with updates on the policy pertaining to home security system signs, real estate signs and political signs.

The company cited Glendale city code concerning political signs, set out the maximum number and size of signs allowed, and said they could not be displayed earlier than 71 days before an election. Noncompliant signs had to be removed within three days, it said.

That meant the earliest residents could display political signs was Aug. 24. Five days before that, Boyle sent an email asking whether the prohibitions included her family’s BLM sign.

“Black Lives Matters signs are not allowed, along with political flags,” Spectrum replied.

Violation notices start with a warning, then a $50 fine that increases based on the number of violations. Boyle removed her sign.

But she suspected Spectrum wasn’t applying the rules consistently. She emailed Spectrum again, this time about the six Trump 2020 flags on the next street. The company replied that flag restrictions would not be enforced if the flags are in good condition and removed after the Nov. 3 election.

Boyle responded that a Black Lives Matter flag should then be acceptable, and she put her sign back up on Sept. 4, intending to replace it with a BLM flag once it arrived in the mail.

Boyle received an official violation notice in the mail, dated Sept. 8, declaring she was in violation of the HOA’s sign policy.

“This is a property maintenance violation on your property. Please take steps to correct the problem. The sign on your property needs to be removed,” the notice warned.

Spectrum referred Cronkite News to its attorney, Beth Mulcahy, who did not return requests for comment by email and voicemail.

Political sign or property maintenance violation?

Opal Tometi, one of three women who co-founded Black Lives Matter in 2013, has written on her website that BLM is a human rights issue, a view that’s widely supported in some circles but controversial in others.

Jonathan Dessaules, an HOA attorney at Dessaules Law Group in Phoenix, is not representing Boyle but offered a legal perspective on her BLM sign.

It’s reasonable to argue that a BLM sign should be considered a political sign protected under Arizona law, he said, adding, “No one is going to believe that a Black Lives Matter sign is apolitical.”

Dessaules emphasized the importance of an HOA’s rules, known as declarations of covenants, conditions, and restrictions, or CC&Rs. Homeowners agree to abide by CC&Rs, which often prohibit any modification to the outside of a home, including a sign or flag, without approval.

According to the violation notice mailed to Boyle, her neighborhood’s CC&R says “No signs or advertisements of any kind may be placed, allowed or maintained without prior written approval and authorization of the Board.”

However, Dessaules said, if Spectrum is not regulating other kinds of signs and flags, such as congratulatory signs and those for sports teams, Boyle would have a solid argument that she is being discriminated against.

One key question needs to be answered, he said: “Is the association taking a position on speech that suggests that their actions are designed to prohibit only certain political speech, as opposed to all speech?”

Dessaules also questions Spectrum’s reference to the city code that defines political signs as those supporting a candidate or ballot measure.

“Enforcing city code is not the role of HOAs,” Dessaules said.

The power of signs, flags to connect people

Boyle said she needed to establish what she and her family stand for as they settled into homeownership.

“Given all the changes in our country right now and how the civil rights movement has reawakened itself, I felt it was the right time to get involved,” she said, and displaying the sign was one way to interact with neighbors.

Boyle said her family was in the front yard when an elderly couple walked by and said they supported BLM, too.

A neighbor who supports Trump said he respected Boyle’s right to publicly express her support for BLM.

Another neighbor discussed with her how he grew up in Mesa as a minority and understands what it is like to fight for equality.

Only some responses were negative.

On Sept. 5, a person driving by their house yelled at Boyle’s husband to take down the sign and shouted that all lives matter.

On Sept. 11, Boyle’s BLM sign was stolen.

On Sept. 23, she replaced the sign with a BLM flag, hanging from her home, above the driveway.

She has not received any additional violation notices.