A federal judge on Monday struck down key parts of an Arkansas law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks found that elements of the law are unconstitutional.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22314576

Summary

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders proposed a $6.5 billion budget for the next fiscal year, with half of the $182.5 million spending increase allocated to a school voucher program.

The plan boosts funding for private and home-school expenses to $187 million and sets aside $90 million in reserves for the program.

Critics warn the program could divert resources from public schools, potentially leaving them underfunded as voucher costs grow

The budget also includes $13 million for maternal health, $50 million for corrections, and $3 million to raise state employee pay, but some lawmakers criticized reliance on one-time funds.

Bills filed in the Arkansas legislature on Wednesday would repeal the requirement for fluoride in the Natural State’s drinking water.

Senate Bill 2 would repeal Arkansas Code § 20-7-136 that mandates the use of fluoride and places the Department of Health in charge of setting limits. The bill is sponsored by Sen. Clint Penzo (R-Springdale) and Sen. Bryan King (R-Green Forest), with cosponsors Rep. Matt Duffield (R-Russellville) and Rep. Aaron Pilkington (R-Knoxville).

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21555013

Nearly 5,000 students who received vouchers in Year One continued into Year Two of the program. They were joined by more than 9,000 new enrollees who joined the program this year, for a total enrollment of 14,297. As with Year One, the overwhelming majority of the new enrollees — 83% — did not attend public school in the prior year.

Either way, the program has to date mostly provided vouchers to students who are not moving over from public schools. These results fit a consistent pattern in other similar statewide voucher programs nationwide. Most of the public cash doled out winds up boosting the bank accounts of families who were never in the public school system to begin with.

Nearly 5,000 students who received vouchers in Year One continued into Year Two of the program. They were joined by more than 9,000 new enrollees who joined the program this year, for a total enrollment of 14,297. As with Year One, the overwhelming majority of the new enrollees — 83% — did not attend public school in the prior year.

Either way, the program has to date mostly provided vouchers to students who are not moving over from public schools. These results fit a consistent pattern in other similar statewide voucher programs nationwide. Most of the public cash doled out winds up boosting the bank accounts of families who were never in the public school system to begin with.

A doctor who had confirmed the diagnosis was apologetic but insistent: the state’s laws meant he could be fined or jailed if he performed an abortion. In the wake of the US supreme court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade, Arkansas activated a so-called trigger law that made all abortion illegal except if a woman was in an acute medical emergency and facing death. There are no other exceptions: not for rape victims, minors or fatal fetal anomalies.

A failed petition to ban voting machines in Saline County has been referred to an ethics committee after issues were found with the way signatures for the petition were collected. Members of the Arkansas Legislature made the decision Monday at a Joint Performance Review Committee Meeting.

The ballot measure would have mandated votes in the county be made without a machine and counted by hand. Restore Election Integrity Arkansas is led in part by Col. Conrad Reynolds, who told Little Rock Public Radio before that he does not trust voting machines.

Reynolds has said voting machines could be flipping votes to select more moderate Republicans over more conservative candidates. Little Rock Public Radio has not been able to verify these claims, and critics of hand counting say its expensive, costly and prone to error.

The legislators brought up a Facebook post by a man named Joshua James, whose profile says he lives in New Mexico. James posted on Facebook in July “The Arkansas PAPER BALLOT initiative is in need of 15-20 full time signature gatherers for 2 weeks.”

My personal favorite part :

The legislative committee Monday also alleged that canvassers or representatives from the group may have been altering documents. Under each signature page the canvassers collected, the address was blacked out and replaced with the same Conway hotel address. Two notaries testified that they did not see the alterations to the documents when they notarized them.

Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Beebe, called the situation ironic since the argument for paper ballots is that they are more secure : “The same group that wants paper ballots is okay with altering notarized documents before submission.”

The Arkansas Supreme Court has ordered the secretary of state’s office to continue counting signatures for an amendment to expand medical marijuana.

The high court on Wednesday ordered the secretary of state to continue validating roughly 18,000 signatures collected to put the amendment on the ballot. Those signatures had previously been thrown out over a paperwork issue, meaning votes on the amendment in November wouldn’t count.

Wednesday's order says Thurston must continue counting signatures until slightly exceeding the threshold of 90,704 signatures needed to place proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot. Earlier this week, Thurston said some signatures collected during a 30-day "cure period" in August should not be counted, meaning the amendment didn't meet the threshold. The group behind the amendment filed a lawsuit challenging the decision on Tuesday.

The signatures were disqualified because they were collected by paid canvassers. The group behind the amendment, Arkansans for Patient Access, hired a third-party company to then hire paid signature-gatherers. Representatives for the company, instead of the amendment sponsor, then signed off on some required paperwork for canvassers, in violation of state law.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20459024

Morgan Nick was six years old when she was abducted from a baseball field in Alma in June 1995. In a news conference Tuesday, Alma Police Chief Jeff Horner said a former person of interest in the case, Billy Jack Lincks, is now the main suspect in Nick’s abduction.

“The most important thing here is Morgan is still missing, but we’ve reached a point where we can concentrate on one suspect to determine the circumstances surrounding Morgan’s abduction,” he said.

Lincks died in 2000 while serving a prison term for sexual indecency with a child. He attempted to abduct a child about 12 weeks after Nick’s disappearance, about eight miles away from where she was last seen.

Morgan Nick was six years old when she was abducted from a baseball field in Alma in June 1995. In a news conference Tuesday, Alma Police Chief Jeff Horner said a former person of interest in the case, Billy Jack Lincks, is now the main suspect in Nick’s abduction.

“The most important thing here is Morgan is still missing, but we’ve reached a point where we can concentrate on one suspect to determine the circumstances surrounding Morgan’s abduction,” he said.

Lincks died in 2000 while serving a prison term for sexual indecency with a child. He attempted to abduct a child about 12 weeks after Nick’s disappearance, about eight miles away from where she was last seen.

Arkansas sued YouTube and parent company Alphabet on Monday, saying the video-sharing platform is made deliberately addictive and fueling a mental health crisis among youth in the state.

Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office filed the lawsuit in state court, accusing them of violating the state’s deceptive trade practices and public nuisance laws. The lawsuit claims the site is addictive and has resulted in the state spending millions on expanded mental health and other services for young people.

In addition to tossing the abortion amendment previously.

A measure looking to further open medical marijuana access in Arkansas looks to now be off the November 2024 ballot.

Officials with Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston’s office sent a notice to Arkansans for Patient Access on Monday stating that the qualified signatures submitted during the extra “curing” period following the original deadline were not enough to place the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment in front of voters. Arkansas medical marijuana sales broke all records for 2023

The letter from Thurston’s office stated that 10,521 of the new submissions “were deemed valid” and would be combined to the earlier total. However, the letter continued, that combined amount would only be 88,040, which falls below the threshold set for the November ballot of 90,704.

Leaders with Arkansans for Patient Access claim that the group had far surpassed the ballot threshold, saying they had submitted more than 150,000 signatures that came from every county in Arkansas.