For 35 years, a federal court order has kept 10 judicial seats in Arkansas tied to majority-Black subdistricts. The order came out of a lawsuit by Black residents who said the state's way of electing judges violated the Voting Rights Act.
According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, before that 1991 order, Black judges had not been elected in Arkansas.
On Thursday, two days after the election, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, a Republican, asked a federal judge to end it.
What Griffin is arguing
Griffin's filing leans on Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court ruling in April that weakened a key part of the Voting Rights Act. The Arkansas Advocate says the ruling held that the law doesn't require states to create majority-minority districts.
His filing also says the state has followed the order in good faith and that "any vestiges of past discrimination have been eliminated to the extent practicable." In a news release, he called the order "premised on racial stereotypes and contrary to equal protection mandates."
Griffin's own argument shows what he's banking on. The door he is walking through opened in April, when the court cut back the law behind this order.
Republican officials elsewhere have moved fast through the same door. In Texas, Galveston County's map switch is another fight over what's left of the law after Callais.
Who this affects
This isn't about a map on a wall. Judges decide custody cases, evictions, criminal sentences. Who sits on the bench matters to the people standing in front of it.
Barry Jefferson, president of the NAACP's Arkansas State Conference, called the filing "an attack on the Black judges that are doing an outstanding job right now across Arkansas."
"We can't let this continue to happen throughout our country," he said.
The Legal Defense Fund said it plans to oppose Griffin's motion. Kathryn Sadasivan, its senior counsel, described what the state's courts looked like before the order.
"So we're talking about a justice system that was being doled out by people who didn't look like the people who were receiving that justice, and that's pretty fundamentally unfair," she said. She called it "an important decree that's led to a more representative bench."
Griffin says the problem has been solved. Sadasivan's point is that the order is the reason there has been progress to point to. Take it away, and Arkansas will find out what happens to those 10 seats without it.
A judge will decide.
The bottom line
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin asked a federal judge on November 5 to end a 1991 court order that created 10 judicial seats in majority-Black subdistricts, citing the Supreme Court's April ruling that weakened the Voting Rights Act. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund says Black judges had not been elected in Arkansas before that order, and it plans to oppose him.
Source
Arkansas attorney general seeks end to order establishing majority-Black judicial districts — Arkansas Advocate
