(The Center Square) – The LEARNS Act cannot be enacted until Aug. 1 because the Legislature did not pass a separate motion declaring the bill an emergency, Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Herbert Wright ruled Friday.
The omnibus bill signed into law by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders includes pay raises for teachers, literary coaches for the schools, and “Educational Freedom Accounts” for parents to use to send their children to the school of their choice.
The Marvell-Elaine School District sued the state in Pulaski County Circuit Court over the state’s plans to contract with a management group to run the district. The district says lawmakers did not take a separate vote on an emergency clause that would make the bill effective immediately as required by state statutes. The district was joined by other plaintiffs, including Arkansas Citizens for Public Education and Students, known as CAPES.
Wright said in his ruling while the House and Senate journals show two separate votes were taken, a video provided to the court indicates just one vote.
“The emergency clause simply had not been constitutionally passed when it left the Legislature and made its way to the governor,” Wright said in his ruling. “The state may defer to the rules of the Legislature, which allow for such a combined vote, but such rules do not insulate the Legislature from the requirements of the Arkansas Constitution.”
Wright also rejected a claim by the attorney general that the state cannot be sued because it has sovereign immunity.
“The plaintiffs could not, for example, seek a monetary judgment against the state under these circumstances,” Wright said. “Yet, the state may not resort to a claim of sovereign immunity where the state is acting illegally, and a request for injunctive relief may survive an assertion of sovereign immunity. Here, the plaintiffs have prayed for injunctive and declaratory relief, seeking that the state follow its own constitution. Sovereign immunity does not entitle the state to ignore that constitution.”
The ruling comes two weeks after the Arkansas Supreme Court lifted a stay issued by Wright that kept the law from going into effect. Wright held a hearing on the case on June 20.
