Arkansas whistleblowers cannot sue state agencies over alleged violations of the law intended to shield them, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled Thursday, doubling down on its interpretation of the state's legal immunity.
In a 5-2 decision, the justices dismissed a lawsuit filed by former state employee Annette Barnes, who claimed that she was fired from the Arkansas Department of Community Correction for speaking out against alleged discriminatory practices.
Barnes said her termination violated the Arkansas Whistle-Blower Act, passed in 1999 to give public employees the right to sue state agencies if they believe they were fired in retaliation for reporting wrongdoing. But the majority of the court ruled Thursday that that portion of the law violates the Arkansas Constitution, which explicitly states that the "State of Arkansas shall never be made defendant in any of her courts."
Arguments surrounding that language, known as the doctrine of "sovereign immunity," have been swirling around state courts ever since the Supreme Court opted to take a strict interpretation of it in January, when the court dismissed a lawsuit filed by a former university bookstore clerk seeking back wages.
That ruling in Board of Trustees v. Andrews overturned 20 years of court precedent and part of the Arkansas Minimum Wage Act.
The court Thursday broke along similar lines. Writing for the majority, Justice Shawn Womack cited heavily from the earlier decision and said, "We interpreted the constitution 'precisely as it reads.'"
Another justice, Josephine Hart, repeated her criticisms of the majority's rationale, saying it "would effectively strike down" the Arkansas Whistle-Blower Act.
"The majority's discussion and disposition of this case deprives Annette Barnes, and hereafter all the people of this state, of access to their state courts to redress wrongs perpetrated at the hands of state government," Hart wrote in the opening of her dissent.
Joining the majority was Justice Robin Wynne, who emphasized in a concurring opinion that the court's recent rulings on sovereign immunity have applied only to legislative waivers. Justice Karen Baker penned her own dissent.
The Department of Community Correction, which oversees parole and probation services, fired Barnes in December 2014 after finding that she had given false testimony in a federal court case involving her son, according to a letter Barnes had from the agency.
Barnes said she never intentionally lied and that her memory was affected by Alzheimer's disease. A federal job discrimination case she filed against her former employer was voluntarily dismissed last year, according to court records.
According to Barnes, who described her claims to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette earlier this year, she and other female colleagues were subjected to verbal abuse by male staff members at the residential facility in Little Rock where she worked.
In copies of emails and records Barnes provided to the newspaper, she reported frequent clashes with her colleagues to her supervisors and lamented about being assigned to undesirable shifts.
She also provided several years of positive employee evaluation reports. During her time at the parole and probation agency, Barnes rose to the rank of lieutenant, before being fired.
"It was like a good old boys system over there," Barnes said Thursday.
Dina Tyler, a spokesman for the Department of Community Correction, said the agency does not believe Barnes' allegations. "We didn't find anything to substantiate her claims," she said.
As for the justices tossing her lawsuit, Barnes said she had not even been made aware that her lawsuit had reached the state's highest court. She said she wasn't sure who her attorney was in the case, explaining that she has had several attorneys and trouble contacting them.
Neither of the two attorneys listed as representing Barnes on the court's website could be reached for comment Thursday.
Metro on 04/13/2018