From the Arkansas Advocate:
An Arkansas judge has granted Attorney General Tim Griffin’s motion to dismiss his lawsuit against the Board of Corrections that accused the panel of violating the state’s law on open records and meetings.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox’s one-page order Thursday dismissing the case comes less than a month after the state Supreme Court ordered him to do so. Griffin requested the dismissal after Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ four appointees to the seven-member board voted in favor of a settlement agreement.
“Regardless of the parties involved or the issues at stake, transparency and accountability must remain cornerstones of good government,” Griffin said in a statement. “The Freedom of Information Act serves an essential role in preserving public confidence in our institutions, and I will continue to defend it whenever necessary.”
The ruling ends a legal battle that began in late 2023 and was part of a larger fight over who controls the state’s prison system.
The board in March voted to settle the lawsuit, 4-3, after Sanders appointed several new members. Her appointments prior to December did not make up a majority of the seven-member board, which sued her in 2023 over who had the power to fire the Department of Corrections’ top leaders.
Griffin’s lawsuit, filed not long after the board sued Sanders, alleged the board committed several public records and meetings law violations in the process of hiring Abtin Mehdizadegan and his law firm, Hall Booth Smith.
Mehdizadegan represented the board in both the lawsuit against Sanders and in the lawsuit filed by Griffin until he was fired earlier this year, after the new appointments were made.
Board member Lee Watson and former chairman Benny Magness, whose term expired last year, asked Fox to allow them to intervene and had requested the judge not grant the motion to dismiss. Griffin filed an emergency request with the state Supreme Court, arguing it had the right to request the case’s dismissal.
Watson and Magness said in a statement that while they understood Fox had to follow the Supreme Court’s ruling, they had been looking forward to their day in court. The two said they did not violate the state FOIA.
“Despite the terms of the agreement entered over Watson and Magness’s objections, the attorney general’s dismissal of its suit makes it clear that there was no substance to its suit—which was filed immediately following the board’s challenge to the constitutionality of statues diminishing the board’s authority,” the two said in a statement.
A separate suit challenging laws that gave the governor power to fire the corrections department secretary and the leaders of the corrections and community corrections divisions is pending before a separate judge. Griffin’s office has asked Pulaski County Circuit Judge Patricia James to lift her injunction against the laws.
