This post has been updated since it was originally published to include a response from the attorney general’s office and a statement from Ali Noland.
As expected, Attorney General Tim Griffin today appealed a Pulaski County judge’s ruling on the state’s landmark K-12 education law, Arkansas LEARNS, to the state Supreme Court.
Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Herbert Wright on Friday sided with a group of plaintiffs seeking to halt implementation of the law, issuing a decision that seemingly suspended it until Aug. 1. But the state is interpreting Wright’s order differently. Jeff LeMaster, a spokesman for Griffin, said the Friday ruling does not prohibit implementation of the law.
The state Education Department’s web portal for Arkansas LEARNS remains active, and the department is still accepting applications for “Education Freedom Accounts,” a new universal voucher program created under the law.
“The previous order was an injunction that prohibited the Department of Education from implementing LEARNS,” LeMaster told the Arkansas Times. “That order required the Department to halt all implementation. By contrast, the circuit court’s decision on Friday is a declaratory judgment. It doesn’t order the Department to halt anything, and the Department can move forward with implementation.”
Ali Noland, the Little Rock attorney representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, blasted the attorney general’s insistence on moving forward with LEARNS implementation as “a direct affront to the authority of the judiciary, the stability of the rule of law in Arkansas, and the Arkansas Constitution.” (Noland is an occasional contributor to the Arkansas Times.)
Wright previously froze LEARNS on May 26 by issuing a temporary restraining order. A temporary restraining order is a type of injunction — a court order explicitly commanding a party to do or not do something. Griffin appealed to the Supreme Court, which eventually threw out Wright’s temporary restraining order but declined to weigh in on the merits of the case, sending it back to his Pulaski County courtroom for a June 20 hearing.
The case centers on a technical question about the validity of the emergency clause attached to LEARNS, a piece of language that allows a bill to take effect as soon as it’s signed by the governor rather than going through the typical 90-day waiting period for new laws. The plaintiffs, a group of public school advocates and employees of a school district that would be affected by LEARNS, argued that the legislature failed to properly vote on the bill’s emergency clause this spring.
Wright essentially agreed with the plaintiffs on May 26, and on Friday he agreed with them again, stating “findings of fact and conclusions of law” in a 10-page order.
“The Court finds that the Emergency Clause of the LEARNS Act was not enacted pursuant to the requirements of that Constitution. Since that provision of the law is not effective, all provisions of the Act purported to be immediately effective due to the invalid clause are now effective as of the default date the Act would be effective – August 1, 2023,” the judge wrote.
Though Wright did not issue an injunction, the language of the order is hardly ambiguous. (It’s not fully clear why Wright didn’t issue an injunction, though he may have felt constrained by the means in which the Supreme Court’s rejected his earlier temporary restraining order.) But Griffin appears to feel the state is not bound by the ruling.
Noland, the plaintiffs attorney, made the following statement when asked about the attorney general’s interpretation of Wright’s ruling:
The circuit court has unequivocally ruled that the LEARNS Act is not yet the law. The court held that applying the LEARNS Act at this time is unconstitutional. The fact that the AG is openly defying the circuit court’s unambiguous order and is continuing to illegally apply the LEARNS Act is a direct affront to the authority of the judiciary, the stability of the rule of law in Arkansas, and the Arkansas Constitution. By defying the circuit court’s order, the Attorney General has created a true constitutional crisis. This is both alarming and completely unnecessary. The State’s actions in defying a valid court order should outrage and deeply concern all Arkansans.
The composition of the Supreme Court has changed since the LEARNS case was last before it just a few weeks ago. Justice Robin Wynne, one of the two justices most sympathetic to the plaintiffs, died on June 22. Today, Gov. Sarah Sanders announced the appointment of Cody Hiland, chair of the state Republican Party and a former U.S. attorney, to fill the vacancy.
