SUMMARY: Good Wednesday morning. Severe weather is expected today across northwest Arkansas and the river valley, with thunderstorms starting as early as 7 a.m. These storms may bring damaging winds, large hail, and potential tornadoes. The severe weather threat encompasses all of Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, hitting a level 5 out of 5 in northeast Arkansas. Conditions will remain windy and humid with gusts up to 40 mph. While the worst impacts are expected in the morning, another round of severe storms is predicted for Thursday, particularly affecting the river valley. Be prepared and monitor weather alerts for safety.

40/29 Meteorologist Majestic Storm says there is a statewide severe weather threat across Arkansas today.

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by Tess Vrbin, Arkansas Advocate
April 2, 2025

An Arkansas House committee approved a bill Tuesday that supporters said would protect religious freedom, a day after the Senate rejected a bill with a similar stated goal.

House Bill 1615 will be heard by the full House Wednesday after passing the Judiciary Committee on a split voice vote following nearly an hour of public opposition. The bill would “prohibit the government from discriminating against certain individuals and organizations because of their beliefs regarding marriage or what it means to be female or male.”

This would protect Arkansas government employees from adverse employment action if they refuse to do something within the context of their jobs that conflicts with their “sincerely held religious beliefs,” such as providing a marriage license to a same-sex couple, according to the bill.

House Bill 1669, which had similar language regarding the “sincerely held religious beliefs” of parents seeking to foster or adopt children in Arkansas, failed in the Senate Monday after passing a House committee, the full House and the Senate Judiciary Committee in March. The bill’s Republican sponsors, Rep. Mary Bentley of Perryville and Sen. Alan Clark of Lonsdale, said HB 1669 would ensure Arkansas does not join the ranks of states in which parents who do not accept or affirm LGBTQ+ children’s identities are not allowed to foster or adopt.

Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, said the bill would set a “dangerous precedent” by shielding foster or adoptive parents from adverse government action if their faith-based actions harm children. He reminded the chamber that not all “sincerely held religious beliefs” are Christian.

Fifteen Republican senators voted for the bill, which needed 18 votes to pass. Dismang and three other Republicans joined the chamber’s six Democrats in voting against the bill. Five more Republicans did not vote and four voted present. The Senate later expunged the vote, and the bill is on the upper chamber’s Wednesday agenda.

The original version of Act 733 of 2023 included language about foster care, adoption agencies and the issuing of marriage licenses similar to both HB 1669 and HB 1615. That legislation was amended to remove such specific language. Critics said it would not only empower anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination but also would contradict a similarly worded ballot measure that voters rejected in 2022.

Rep. Robin Lundstrum, R-Elm Springs, is the primary sponsor of Act 733 and HB 1615. Attorneys from the conservative First Liberty Institute and the Family Council’s Arkansas Justice Institute supported Lundstrum in presenting the bill to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

Tuesday’s debate

Attorney J.P. Tribell was the only opponent of Bentley’s bill in the March 12 House committee hearing, but one of eight opponents of HB 1615 Tuesday.

“[There are] some rural counties where possibly everybody in the courthouse might be opposed to gay marriage, and if somebody wants to get a marriage license and they can find nobody, at what point do we determine that there’s an undue burden on the person seeking a marriage license?” Tribell said. “Do they have to drive two to three hours to get to Little Rock to do that?”

Civics educator Gail Choate said HB 1615 espouses the “opposite logic” of Act 116 of 2025, which all but one of HB 1615’s 13 sponsors supported. Act 116 prohibits public entities from engaging in identity-based “discriminination” or “preferential treatment” in contracting and hiring practices.

“This bill does not evaluate individuals based on their actions, their qualifications or their ability to contribute to society,” Choate said. “It singles them out solely based upon their identity.”

Other opponents of the bill spoke on behalf of themselves or their loved ones in the LGBTQ+ community. Kaymo O’Connell, a transgender high school senior from Little Rock, expressed concern about experiencing employment discrimination upon entering the workforce in the near future.

HB 1615 allows government employees who issue marriage licenses to recuse themselves from doing so. Marie Mainard O’Connell, Kaymo’s mother, said HB 1615 lacks a public notification process for such recusals.

“That’s where the harm occurs,” she said. “[People] are harmed when they expect to be cared for, and then they are told, ‘I don’t believe that about you, I don’t have to care for you that way.’ That creates a moment of trauma.”

Social workers Kirsten Sowell and Courtney Frierson said HB 1615 would create a conflict between their ethical codes, which include acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, and the fact that the state issues their professional licenses.

“If my licensing board receives a complaint based on someone’s religious disagreement with my inclusive care, who are they supposed to protect: me or the complainant?” Frierson said. “That’s a legal gray zone, and it’s not theoretical, it’s coming.”

No members of the public or of the House Judiciary Committee spoke in favor of HB 1615. Opposition on the committee primarily came from its Democrats, including Rep. Nicole Clowney of Fayetteville, who called it “blatant viewpoint discrimination.”

“We heard a lot of abstract ideas about religious freedom [today],” she said. “We did not hear from one person who is for this bill who is currently being persecuted.”

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

The post Religious freedom bill advances after Arkansans say it will foster anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination appeared first on arkansasadvocate.com

by Sonny Albarado, Arkansas Advocate
April 1, 2025

A federal judge declared an Arkansas law requiring age verification to create new social media accounts unconstitutional late Monday and permanently blocked the law.

The law, Act 689 of 2023, was the first of its kind in the nation and was a priority of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in her first year in office. It required social media platforms to verify the age of all account holders in Arkansas. Those under 18 could only access sites with parental permission.

U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks of the Western District of Arkansas said in Monday’s ruling that Act 689 “would violate the First Amendment rights of Arkansans” because it is a “content-based restriction on speech that is not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest.” The law also would violate the due process rights of the plaintiffs, the judge wrote.

The ruling marked the first permanent injunction that NetChoice, the nonprofit trade association for large tech companies that brought the suit, has obtained against similar laws it has challenged as violating free speech and enterprise online, according to a press release. 

NetChoice filed its lawsuit against the state in June 2023, and Brooks issued a preliminary injunction that August, about two weeks before the law was set to take effect on Sept. 1.   

The court’s ruling confirms NetChoice’s argument that restricting access to protected speech violates the First Amendment, the group’s litigation director, Chris Marchese, said in a statement. 

“This ruling protects Americans from having to hand over their IDs or biometric data just to access constitutionally protected speech online,” Marchese said. “It reaffirms that parents — not politicians or bureaucrats — should decide what’s appropriate for their children.”

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a statement Tuesday that he respects the court’s decision, adding that his office is evaluating its options.

Sanders called for lawmakers to amend Act 689 during her January State of the State address “so that it’s no longer held up in court and can begin to be enforced.” 

To date, no such amendments to the law have been proposed, but Sen. Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs, told the Advocate last week he expects it to “happen one way or another” since the governor said it’s important to her. 

Brooks’ 41-page opinion on Monday granted NetChoice’s motion for summary judgment and declared that “NetChoice members and their users will suffer irreparable harm” if Act 689 takes effect because it “abridges the First Amendment rights of Arkansans who use social media and contains terms too vague to be reasonably understood.”

“The Court does not doubt the reality, well supported by the record, that unfettered social media access can and does harm minors,” Brooks wrote, adding that the state does have a compelling interest in protecting minors.

“The state does not, however, have ‘a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed,’” he said, quoting from another court’s opinion.

The law is “maximally burdensome” on both the social media platforms and the users it targets, the judge wrote.

“It erects barriers to accessing entire social media platforms rather than placing those barriers around the content or functions that raise concern,” he said. “It not only hinders adults’ ability to speak and receive protected speech online, it excludes minors whose parents do not consent (or cannot prove their consent)” from accessing forums on the internet.

If the Legislature’s intent “was to protect minors from materials or interactions that could harm them online, there is no evidence that the Act will be effective in achieving that goal,” the judge said.

“Rather than targeting content that is harmful to minors, Act 689 simply impedes access to content writ large.”  

The law also “is unclear which NetChoice members are subject to regulation,” forcing some companies “to choose between risking enforcement penalties … and implementing age-verification requirements that burden their users’ First Amendment rights,” Brooks wrote.

NetChoice members whom the Act clearly regulates “would be pressed into service as the private censors of the State,” Brooks noted. “No legal remedy exists to compensate Arkansans for the loss of their First Amendment rights.”

The state argued that the act’s language made it clear that it covers Meta, Twitter (now X) and TikTok, but NetChoice argued that members like Snapchat, Nextdoor and Pinterest couldn’t be certain the law does not apply to them, according to the ruling. The state responded that the law didn’t apply to Snapchat because “it’s ‘different from a traditional social media platform.’” The law also specifically exempted YouTube and Google from having to verify users’ age.

The act is unconstitutionally vague because “it fails to adequately define which entities are subject to its requirements, risking chilling effects and inviting arbitrary enforcement,” according to the ruling.

Brooks concludes by stating “Act 689 is a content-based restriction on speech, and it is not targeted to address the harms the State has identified. Arkansas takes a hatchet to adults’ and minors’ protected speech alike though the Constitution demands it use a scalpel.”

Deputy Editor Antoinette Grajeda contributed to this story.

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

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