Entry Category: Laws and Court Cases - Starting with L

The court case Lake View School District No. 25 v. Huckabee examined the structure for the funding of Arkansas schools in a grueling, fifteen-year process. This case led to the subsequent overhaul of public school funding with the aim to be more fair and exact and to benefit all Arkansas students equally. In 1992, the school district of Lake View (Phillips County) first brought its case against the State of Arkansas, claiming that the funding system for the public schools violated both the state’s constitution and the U.S. Constitution because it was inequitable and inadequate. At that time, schools received funding from three levels of government: local, state, and federal. Because some local governments had more tax money available for …

W. F. Laman, et al. v. Robert S. McCord, et al. was a 1968 decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court that established the framework for interpreting the state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in ways that favored public access to meetings and government papers. The lawsuit leading to the decision of the Supreme Court was filed only weeks after the Arkansas General Assembly enacted the FOIA. The law gave the public and the media the right to examine and copy public records and to be present whenever governmental bodies met. The unanimous opinion used unusually strong language in condemning a violation of the new act at a closed meeting of the city council of North Little Rock (Pulaski County) and …

Landlord-tenant law is divided into two types: residential and commercial. Because commercial landlord-tenant law is governed mostly by the law of contracts, this discussion is restricted in scope to residential landlord-tenant law. Landlord-tenant relations are regulated generally by state law as opposed to federal, although a few relevant federal laws, most notably the Fair Housing Act (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968), preempt any conflicting state law. Public and Section 8 housing is also regulated mostly by federal law. About half of the states have enacted the Uniform Residential Landlord Tenant Act, which was adopted by the Uniform Law Commission in 1972. Since then, the uniform law was repeatedly introduced in Arkansas to no avail, but in …

The LEARNS Act (Act 237 of 2023) was the signature piece of legislation promoted by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders during the 2023 session of the Arkansas General Assembly, her first session as governor of the state. After her election, Sanders indicated that her top priority would be a bill to change the public elementary and secondary education system in the state. On February 8, 2023, she held a press conference at the Arkansas State Capitol together with various Republican Party officials to announce some of the basics of her plan, which was still being drafted in secret. These included: a starting teacher pay set at $50,000, the creation of a voucher program (called “education freedom accounts”) that could be used …

From 1982 until 2014, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Western Division, handled Little Rock School District, et al. v. Pulaski County Special School District et al. At least six federal district judges presided over the case during this span of time. In 1984, the district court ruled that three school districts situated in Pulaski County were unconstitutionally segregated: the Little Rock School District (LRSD), the Pulaski County Special School District (PCSSD), and the North Little Rock School District (NLRSD). One reason for the ruling was that the population of Little Rock was approximately sixty-five percent white in 1984, while seventy percent of Little Rock School District students were black. Those who brought the case feared …

Lockhart v. McCree was a 1986 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court holding that it was not a violation of the requirement that a jury be a fair representation of a community if a court removed from the jury pool—prior to jury selection—all potential jurors who had expressed their opposition to the death penalty. Building upon its 1968 ruling in Witherspoon v. Illinois, the Court clarified the concept of fair representation for a jury of one’s peers. The case of Lockhart v. McCree began in 1978 when Ardia V. McCree stood trial in connection with the shooting death of gift shop and service station owner Evelyn Broughton in Camden (Ouachita County) on February 14, 1978. While McCree denied his involvement …