A Conway attorney who has filed multiple lawsuits in various jurisdictions seeking to force public officials to allow him to carry a firearm into publicly-owned buildings was handed a defeat this week by a Pulaski County circuit judge who dismissed his lawsuit against Pulaski County Circuit Court.
Chris Corbitt, 52, an attorney who holds an enhanced concealed carry license (ECCL) from the state, has argued in several lawsuits that he and other ECCL holders should be allowed to carry firearms into public buildings where the carrying of weapons by the public is prohibited. On Thursday, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chip Welch dismissed a lawsuit Corbitt had filed against Pulaski County Circuit Court last October after he was barred from entry because he was carrying a firearm.
According to public records available through the states Administrative Office of the Courts, Corbitt has filed seven lawsuits since 2020 against various public entities in an effort to test the limits of Arkansas' concealed carry law. Welch's dismissal on Thursday marks the third rebuff Corbitt has been handed, although a lawsuit against the city of Little Rock that was dismissed on a technicality in October 2022 was immediately refiled.
Corbitt, with co-counsel Robert Steinbuch, a Little Rock law school professor, claims that by refusing him entry with his gun, authorities are violating his civil rights and state constitutional protections granted to firearm holders.
Named as defendants in the lawsuit, in addition to Pulaski County Circuit Court, were Pulaski County Sheriff Eric Higgins, County Judge Barry Hyde, Judge Timothy Fox and Pulaski County.
In dismissing the complaint, Welch said the Pulaski County Courthouse building is managed by Hyde as the county executive but that Pulaski County Circuit Court is an arm of the state's judicial branch of government and that in the absence of allegations of illegal or unconstitutional conduct against a named judge, the court itself is immune from lawsuit.
In addition, Welch said that Corbitt had not successfully joined the necessary parties under Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure and that Corbitt himself was precluded from participating in the lawsuit on the grounds that he was seeking a resolution to the same complaint he made in a previous lawsuit.
In a 2020 lawsuit naming the Pulaski County jail along with Higgins and Hyde as defendants, Corbitt's motion for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief was denied by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herbert Wright in January 2022. Wright said in his ruling that Corbitt's interpretation of the law would strip judges of the authority to regulate who can enter the courtroom and would "require a reading that the legislature has superior authority to a court to conduct its proceedings."
Such an interpretation, Wright said in 2022, would be a violation of the separation of powers doctrine. That case is currently being appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court.
Welch said that even if the case deficiencies had not factored into his dismissal, he would have issued a similar ruling to Wright's 2022 decision and would find Corbitt's interpretation of the statute to be unconstitutional.
"Even in 'Gunsmoke,'" Welch said in his ruling, "when the circuit riding judge came to town to convene court there, the cowboys had to 'check their guns' at the door of Miss Kitty's Longbranch Saloon!"
Corbitt has maintained that the state's concealed-carry statute, Arkansas Code 5-73-122, as expanded by the Legislature in 2017, allows "an officer of the court" to bring a weapon into the court. He has said in numerous lawsuits that Arkansas lawyers are defined as officers of the court in the state's Rules of Professional Conduct and that the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized attorneys as such since at least 1978.