## Facts

- Tucson, a charter city, enacted an ordinance requiring the police to dispose of unclaimed and forfeited firearms by destroying them, subject to limited exceptions.
- The Arizona Legislature later amended statutes governing disposition of certain unclaimed property and forfeited firearms to require sale and to prohibit political subdivisions from destroying firearms except as authorized by federal law.
- The Legislature enacted a process allowing a legislator to request an Attorney General investigation of municipal ordinances alleged to conflict with state law; if the city does not cure, the State Treasurer must withhold state-shared revenues after a final determination of illegality.
- After a legislator’s request, the Attorney General concluded Tucson’s ordinance conflicted with state law and filed a special action in the Arizona Supreme Court seeking declaratory and coercive relief.
- Tucson argued its ordinance was protected by charter-city home-rule authority over municipal affairs and challenged the enforcement statute on separation-of-powers and jurisdictional grounds.

## Issues

1. Whether state statutes requiring sale of certain unclaimed/forfeited firearms and forbidding municipal destruction preempt Tucson’s ordinance mandating destruction.
2. Whether firearm regulation and the law-enforcement disposition of unclaimed/forfeited firearms are matters of statewide concern that override charter-city authority.
3. Whether the statutory enforcement process improperly assigns judicial power to the Attorney General or otherwise violates separation of powers.
4. Whether the enforcement statute can constitutionally require the Arizona Supreme Court to accept special-action jurisdiction in such disputes.

## Decision

- The Arizona Supreme Court accepted special-action jurisdiction and granted relief in part.
- The Court held Tucson’s firearm-destruction ordinance conflicted with, and was displaced by, the state statutes governing firearm regulation and firearm disposition.
- The Court concluded the Legislature may direct the Attorney General to investigate alleged conflicts and to initiate a special action to test the ordinance’s validity.
- The Court construed the enforcement statute to preserve the Supreme Court’s constitutional discretion to accept or decline special-action jurisdiction.
- The Court left the enforcement statute in place as construed and declared the Tucson ordinance invalid to the extent it required destruction contrary to state law.

## Legal Principles

- A charter city may control matters of purely municipal concern, but conflicting state law prevails when the subject is of statewide concern.
- The Legislature may expressly preempt municipal regulation in a field identified as statewide, and a direct conflict between state statute and municipal ordinance renders the ordinance unenforceable.
- Disposition of firearms acquired through law-enforcement processes (e.g., unclaimed property handled by police and forfeiture) may be treated as part of statewide firearm policy rather than a purely local property-management decision.
- The Legislature may assign the Attorney General investigatory and litigation duties to enforce state law against municipalities without conferring judicial power.
- A statute may provide a procedure to invoke a court’s original/special-action jurisdiction, but it cannot eliminate the court’s constitutional authority to control whether to accept discretionary jurisdiction.

## Conclusion

The court invalidated Tucson’s ordinance requiring destruction of unclaimed and forfeited firearms because state statutes mandating sale and prohibiting municipal destruction controlled on a matter of statewide concern, and it upheld the state’s enforcement mechanism by interpreting it to preserve judicial discretion over special-action jurisdiction.


State ex rel. Brnovich v. City of Tucson, 399 P.3d 663 (Ariz. 2017)