The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a lawsuit against the Arkansas town of Rose Bud and its mayor, Shawn Gorham, challenging the municipality’s recently enacted restrictions on canvassing at a public event.
In a special meeting last week, Gorham raised the issue of For AR Kids, a registered ballot question committee that wanted to gather signatures at the town’s annual Summerfest event. For AR Kids is the group behind the Educational Rights Amendment, a proposal that would guarantee universal pre-K and require private schools receiving vouchers to meet the same standards as public schools, among other changes. Canvassers for the proposal have to gather more than 90,000 signatures from voters before July 5.
According to the complaint:
Gorham said that “it has always been the Summerfest committee’s position since year one that we would allow any political party to be out there, no matter what their affiliate was, but we have never allowed petitions to be signed because of the simple fact that this is a family environment, there is nothing political about this, this is not the type of place that you want to come and get bombarded and asked to sign a petition and read about it or anything like that.”
At that meeting, the Rose Bud City Council passed an ordinance requiring anyone gathering signatures on a petition to rent a booth at the event, requiring all vendors to remain confined to their booths, and prohibiting anyone from “walking around soliciting people inside” the event. The passage of the ordinance was procedurally defective, however, so the town held another special meeting on Monday to fix the procedural error. Because the ordinance was passed with an emergency clause, it took effect immediately.
This is Rose Bud’s seventh Summerfest. The event begins today (Thursday) at 5 p.m. and runs through Saturday, and it takes place entirely on public property at an old baseball complex across from the local high school.
Today’s lawsuit was filed in federal court in Little Rock on behalf of For AR Kids. Because the event begins today, the suit seeks a temporary restraining order, preventing Rose Bud from enforcing the ordinance, which the complaint describes as “riddled with First Amendment problems.” It also seeks a declaratory judgment and permanent injunction saying the ordinance violates the Constitution and barring the city from enforcing it in the future.
The lawsuit asserts the town and the mayor have violated the First Amendment by: (1) regulating speech based on content; (2) regulating speech on public property; (3) imposing a prior restraint on speech by requiring speakers to obtain approval and pay a fee before engaging in core political speech; and (4) intentionally discriminating against a specific viewpoint.
Speaking to the Arkansas Times by telephone, Gorham said he knew “something” had been filed, but he had not seen the complaint or had an opportunity to talk to the city attorney about any allegations in the lawsuit. Regarding his comment about his “belief that they should not be out there,” however, Gorham said it had nothing to do with the content of the petitions being circulated.
“This is a paid event, oriented toward kids,” Gorham said. “It’s very congested, and signature gathering will block the exit and obstruct the view of traffic. It’s unsafe for kids to be walking around in that kind of traffic. It’s a public safety issue that doesn’t have anything to do with what the petitions say.”
The three-day event requires attendees to either park in the Rose Bud High School parking lot across the street from the old ball park or on School Road, which goes past the school on two sides. The entrance/exit to the event is off-street, adjacent to School Road, and the speed limit on that stretch of street is 25 miles per hour.
Gorham’s statements about public safety — and his assertion that the ordinance has nothing to do with the content of the petitions — appear to be at odds with his prior comments about the issue. According to the complaint, at the special meeting last week, Gorham told the city council and those in attendance how he felt about the signature gathering and petitions in general:
Gorham commented that petition canvassers “are welcome to be out there, and I want to add that they’re only welcome to be out there doing what they’re doing because it is a law. It is not my belief that they should be out there, that they should be allowed to be out there, or what they’re doing is right. But I do not make the laws, I just abide by them and make sure the city is not getting into any trouble. But I want that known, because 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 did not dispute that he made that statement. He disagreed, however, with the ACLU’s assertion that the ordinance violates the First Amendment.
“Our city attorney, when he was drafting the ordinance, he actually used the ACLU’s guidelines and guidelines from the [Arkansas] Municipal League,” Gorham said. “So, if [the ACLU] is saying it’s unconstitutional, they’re contradicting themselves.”
In a press release about the lawsuit, ACLU of Arkansas Executive Director Holly Dickson said, “For AR Kids and other ballot question committees must have access to public events and properties to collect the necessary signatures for their petitions.”
She added, “The ability to engage in political speech and petition activities is crucial for democratic participation and must be protected from arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions.”
Rose Bud’s ordinance comes on the heels of recent stories about police in Hot Springs and Little Rock attempting to prevent signature gathering. In Hot Springs, an attorney attending the Arkansas Bar Association’s annual convention last week was handcuffed and forced to leave the event for carrying signature sheets for a measure to strengthen government transparency laws. On May 30, Little Rock police threatened canvassers with arrest as they stood on a public sidewalk outside of an event hosted by a state agency; at least one officer said they were following orders that originated with Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Sanders is on record opposing most of the measures, and her campaign manager, Chris Caldwell, leads a group trying to stop the Educational Rights Amendment and other proposed amendments related to restoring abortion rights and expanding access to medical marijuana.
Groups who hope to place a constitutional amendment on the November ballot must collect 90,704 signatures from registered voters by July 5. Those hoping to place a statute on the ballot have to collect 72,563 signatures.
A certain proportion of those signatures must be collected from at least 50 of Arkansas’s 75 counties under a law passed by the state Legislature last year. The 50 county provision is being challenged in a separate lawsuit because the Arkansas Constitution requires signatures from only 15 counties.