Old habits die hard - that includes keeping up with legislation filed during sessions of the Arkansas General Assembly. Which brings me to HB 1832, filed today. You can see a copy of it here:
https://arkleg.state.ar.us/Home/FTPDocument?path=%2FBills%2F2025R%2FPublic%2FHB1832.pdf
If I am reading this correctly, the Arkansas Court of Appeals "shall have exclusive original jurisdiction over a facial constitutional challenge" to Code sections, legislative acts, and administrative rules. The court's "procedure will conform to that prevailing in bench trials in the circuit court." The Court of Appeals' decision "may be appealed to the Supreme Court."
The General Assembly's findings and emergency clause offer some clues as to what is going on here. The findings state that "[t]he purpose of this act is to establish the exclusive original jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals under the authority of Arkansas Constitution, Amendment 80, section 9, pertaining to facial constitutional challenges." The emergency clause cites the need for "consistent legal interpretation of facial constitutional challenges to acts of the General Assembly...."
Perhaps the issue is displeasure with circuit court rulings - otherwise, why place "exclusive original jurisdiction" with the Court of Appeals? In any event, stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment