Ballot measure supporters can collect signatures at Arkansas town’s festival, federal judge rules

Exterior of the Richard Sheppard Arnold Federal Courthouse in downtown Little Rock. (John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the town of Rose Bud, Arkansas, from enforcing an ordinance limiting petitioners’ ability to collect signatures for a proposed ballot measure at an event in a public park.

The ordinance would have required canvassers to rent a booth at the event, Rose Bud’s annual Summerfest marking the summer solstice, and restricted all solicitation of signatures to the rented space. Rose Bud’s population is 501, according to the U.S. Census.

For AR Kids, a ballot question committee supporting a proposed amendment to the Arkansas Constitution’s education clause, filed a complaint Thursday morning seeking a temporary restraining order on First Amendment grounds.

The Educational Rights Amendment of 2024 aims to hold private schools receiving state funding to the same standards as public schools in response to the Arkansas LEARNS Act of 2023, a wide-ranging education law that created a new school voucher program. The proposed amendment also seeks to establish universal pre-K, quality special education, after school and summer programming, and assistance for families who earn up to 200% of the federal poverty line.

U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker of the Eastern District of Arkansas granted For AR Kids’ request to enjoin Rose Bud’s ordinance, approved by the town council Monday and set to go into effect Thursday afternoon at the start of Summerfest.

The ordinance violated the right to freedom of speech because it was neither content-neutral nor “narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest,” attorney John Williams of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas wrote in Thursday’s complaint.

Williams repeated his argument to Baker at a Thursday afternoon hearing, while the defendants’ attorney, Don Raney, argued that the ordinance would simply prevent people from “shoving a petition in someone’s face.”

“The city has a right to regulate to some extent what happens on city property,” said Raney, a Searcy-based attorney representing Rose Bud, its town council and Mayor Shawn Gorham. “…There’s a right to freedom of speech, but sometimes there’s a right to freedom from speech.”

Context and timing

On June 12, For AR Kids asked the town about the possibility of collecting signatures at Summerfest, which takes place at a baseball field owned by the town. In response, the ballot question committee received a vendor application and a set of rules including the phrase “No political petitions allowed on city/school property.”

Two days later, Gorham presented the ordinance to the town council at a special meeting.

“What’s on their ballot, I don’t think 98 percent of the town agrees with, but there’s nothing we can do, except vote the right people out and the right people in in November,” Gorham said at the meeting, as transcribed in court documents.

Baker said Gorham’s statement “kind of sounded a little like animosity” toward For AR Kids’ objective.

The town council passed the ordinance Monday at its regular meeting, with an emergency clause that would put it into effect in time for Summerfest.

“The context in which the ordinance was passed shows that it was adopted with the purpose of suppressing the speech of canvassers who wish to collect signatures in support of ballot initiatives,” Williams wrote in the complaint. “There is evidence of this discriminatory purpose in the timing of the ordinance. Defendants had been planning the festival for six months, and presumably could have foreseen any issues arising from solicitation.”

Supporters of proposed constitutional amendments have until July 5 to collect 90,704 signatures from at least 50 counties to qualify the measure for the November ballot. Williams argued in the complaint that For AR Kids would be “irreparably harmed in its ability to collect an adequate number of signatures” with two weeks until the deadline.

In her ruling, Baker agreed that the plaintiff faced a “threat of irreparable harm.”

Williams and Raney agreed at the hearing that the ordinance would not have prevented petitioners from seeking signatures on public roads surrounding the Summerfest location, though Raney initially said the defendants did not want this to happen outside the entrance of the baseball field where attendees buy their tickets.

“I’m going to predict that canvassing has been done at this festival in the past with no issue and no one had any problems getting in,” Baker replied.

Stand Up Arkansas founder Steve Grappe, one of the canvassers at Summerfest, said Thursday evening that Baker’s ruling was “a victory for us and for the First Amendment.”

“Direct democracy is our tool where we can hold the General Assembly accountable when they pass laws that we disagree with or fail to pass laws that we want,” Grappe said.

Petitioners have been gathering signatures for weeks supporting a variety of ballot measures, and some have expressed concerns that authorities and elected officials have tried to interfere with the process.

Publication of abortion amendment canvasser list is intimidation, ballot question committee says

Earlier this week, Republican members of the state House of Representatives put forth resolutions expressing their disapproval of the Educational Rights Amendment and a proposed measure to allow a limited right to abortion. The abortion resolution passed, but the sponsor of the education resolution withdrew it.

On Friday , Hot Springs police handcuffed Jen Standerfer, an advocate for two proposed government transparency measures, and escorted her from the city’s convention center after she collected signatures at an Arkansas Bar Association conference.

Additionally, in May , Little Rock police told supporters of the abortion amendment that they could be arrested for obstructing traffic while canvassing from a public sidewalk at a busy intersection.

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