Arkansas senator seeks amendment on 'sovereign immunity'

A resolution filed in the state Senate on Monday seeks to refer to the people a constitutional amendment that would undo some of the Arkansas Constitution's "sovereign immunity" protections against lawsuits.

Sovereign immunity, as defined by Article 5, Section 20, of the state constitution, says that "The State of Arkansas shall never be made defendant in any of her courts."

Senate Joint Resolution 2, filed by state Sen. David Wallace, R-Leachville, proposed to add the words "unless provided by law" in front of that sentence.

The change would resolve issues that many attorneys have raised in the wake of an Arkansas Supreme Court decision last year that overturned 20 years of precedent regarding sovereign immunity, said Chris Burks, an attorney who worked on that Supreme Court case.

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Burks' client, Matthew Andrews, was a former bookstore manager at Rich Mountain Community College in Mena. Andrews had sued the University of Arkansas System for back pay. The university system responded by seeking to have the case dismissed in circuit court, citing sovereign immunity.

In Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas v. Andrews, a 5-2 majority of the Supreme Court ruled that sovereign immunity protected the university system from lawsuits for monetary damages, even though the Legislature had voted to allow such suits through the Arkansas Minimum Wage Act.

"It solves the Andrews problem," Burks said of SJR2. "I think it is smart of the Legislature to fix what the Andrews decision did."

In any regular session, the Legislature may vote to refer up to three proposed constitutional amendments to a vote of the people. At least three other proposed constitutional amendments have already been filed for the 2019 session. Those that are adopted by both chambers would be referred to the November 2020 general election ballot.

Wallace, the sponsor of SJR2, could not be reached for comment Monday.

Early last year, a proposed citizen-initiated constitutional amendment to include exemptions to the Arkansas Constitution's sovereign immunity provisions was rejected by Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who said the proposed amendment inadequately defined sovereign immunity for the voters.

Rutledge has yet to review the text of SJR2, a spokesman said Monday. However, the attorney general does not need to sign off on the wording of constitutional amendments referred by the Legislature, as she does with citizen-referred proposals.

Metro on 01/15/2019