On April 21, U.S. District Court Judge George Howard, Jr., died. He was 82. He had been the first African-American judge on the Arkansas Supreme Court, and in 1980 he had become the first African-American U.S. District Court Judge in Arkansas. He had ruled favorably on ballot access for minor parties on three occasions. In 1996, he struck down the Arkansas deadline for new parties to get on the ballot, and the number of signatures, in a case brought by the Reform Party. In 2001, he had declared that Arkansas’ policy of making it impossible for a new party to get on the ballot in a special congressional election is unconstitutional. And last year, he had again struck down the number of signatures needed for a new party (since the Arkansas legislature had refused to obey part of his 1996 ruling). The 2007 legislature did lower the number of signatures.