U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks on Tuesday struck down several Arkansas laws that imposed extra restrictions on gathering signatures for citizen ballot initiatives, saying they violated voters' constitutional free speech rights.
The decision handed victories to the League of Women Voters of Arkansas and other plaintiffs, who sued last year, and Protect AR Rights called the decision an "important victory for the people of Arkansas and their constitutional right to direct democracy."
Brooks struck down 2025 measures that would have required canvassers to verify a petition signer's identity through a photo ID and to read the ballot question aloud or require a petition signer to read the entire ballot question before signing it, noting that ballot questions are often hundreds of words long.
Brooks wrote that requiring a petition signer to possess and present a photo ID "before engaging in core political speech" plainly violates free speech laws and noted that the Arkansas secretary of state's office reviews every signature to confirm that the petition signer is a registered voter.
State officials had contended that requiring a reading of the ballot question before anyone can sign a petition was necessary to prevent a canvasser from misrepresenting the ballot question, but Brooks wrote that the state had refused to prosecute reported cases of such canvasser misconduct and that it should enforce its existing laws before it chose a more restrictive alternative of "imposing burdensome speech codes on good and bad actors alike."
Brooks also rejected some challenges by the League and its fellow plaintiffs and sent three other disputes to trial, and Arkansas Secretary of State Cole Jester, a Republican who had defended the laws in court, said in a statement that his office plans to appeal Brooks' decision and "will fight tirelessly for common sense safeguards like voter ID."
Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., allow citizen-initiated ballot measures, the nonprofit Ballot Initiative Strategy Center said, and in March the center reported a "sharp escalation" by lawmakers in both the number and severity of anti-democratic attacks on the ballot measure process, singling out efforts in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma and noting other efforts to require a larger majority for approval in Arizona, Florida, Missouri, North Dakota and Ohio.