Arkansas Supreme Court grants dismissal in challenge to abortion amendment certification

The Supreme Court of Arkansas on Sept. 5, 2024 granted the State’s motion to dismiss Oscar Stilley’s original action challenging Secretary of State John Thurston’s decision rejecting certification of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment of 2024 for the November ballot. The court, speaking per curiam, adopted a special master's factual findings and dismissed all four counts in Stilley’s petition. The court ordered the mandate to issue immediately and referred the special master’s report to the Crawford County Clerk and the prosecuting attorney for the Twenty-First Judicial District. The petitioner, Oscar Stilley, filed the action on July 16, 2024; the opinion is recorded as 2024 Ark. 124. The court accepted the special master's factual findings that Stilley was convicted of felony offenses in 2009, received an aggregate 180-month prison sentence, and has remained either confined or on supervised release since April 23, 2010; the special master found Stilley was still on supervised release beginning Aug. 10, 2022. Because Stilley had not completed the term of supervised release, the court found he was ineligible to be a registered voter under Arkansas Constitution Amendment 51 § 11 and that his July 2024 voter registration application contained a false attestation in which he wrote, "I have not been lawfully convicted of a felony by a lawful court." On that basis the court concluded Stilley lacked standing under Ark. Code Ann. § 7-9-112(a) to challenge the Secretary's sufficiency determination and dismissed Counts I and IV. The court addressed Counts II and III together and concluded it lacked original jurisdiction to decide Stilley’s constitutional challenges to Acts 236 of 2023 and 1413 of 2013, noting that actions for declaratory judgment and similar constitutional challenges arise in circuit court under Arkansas Constitutional Amendment 80 and the court’s precedent in Reynolds v. Thurston (2024 Ark. 97). The opinion cites Roberts v. Priest for the standard of review of a special master's factual findings and states the court would accept those findings unless clearly erroneous. The court also noted Stilley had filed an objection to the special master’s report but was "unpersuaded" by it. The effect of the ruling is that the Secretary’s sufficiency determination as challenged by Stilley remains unreviewed on the merits by this court because Stilley lacked standing and because the court declined original jurisdiction over the legislative-acts challenges. The respondents named in the opinion are John Thurston, in his official capacity as Arkansas Secretary of State, and Arkansans for Limited Government; the State had moved to dismiss on grounds including lack of standing and jurisdiction. The court's final paragraph states: "Motion to dismiss granted. Mandate to issue immediately."