On December 11, the Arkansas Supreme Court put a referendum on the 2020 ballot that the Secretary of State had rejected. Safe Surgery Act v Thurston, cv-19-641. The referendum had enough valid signatures, but the Secretary of State rejected it because the sponsoring group had not submitted affidavits from each paid petitioner before circulation started, saying that the circulator had not previously been convicted of an election law crime.
When the petition started to circulate, the law required such affidavits to be submitted when the petition was submitted. But the 2019 legislature had changed the law, to say that the affidavits had to be submitted before petitioning could start. The bill took effect immediately because the legislature had added an urgency clause, saying there is an emergency. But it didn’t provide any fact showing there was an emergency.
A majority of the justices ruled that the law’s emergency clause is invalid, because the legislature mentioned no fact explaining what the emergency is. Therefore, the act was not really in effect when the petition started to circulate, and therefore it couldn’t be enforced against this particular petition. Here is the decision in Safe Surgery Act v Thurston, cv-19-641. The vote was 4-3. Thanks to Whitfield Hyman for the link.
