Arkansas Attorney General Opinions
Free plain-English summaries of attorney general opinions issued in Arkansas, with full citations and the original source on every page.
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Why did the Arkansas AG rewrite the popular name for the proposed 'reduce 3 to 1' constitutional amendment limit on legislatively-referred amendments?
The sponsor's revised popular name said the amendment would reduce 'the number of constitutional amendments allowed the General Assembly' under Article 19, Section 22. The AG concluded that wording wa…
Did the Arkansas AG certify the Little Red Hen Committee's proposed constitutional amendment to limit legislatively-referred amendments to one per session?
Yes, but only after rewriting the popular name and ballot title. The AG substituted 'Reducing Constitutional Amendments Proposed by the General Assembly Under Article 19, Section 22 of the Arkansas Co…
Did the Arkansas Attorney General certify the popular name and ballot title for the Campaign Finance Act of 2016, a proposed initiated act on disclosure of independent expenditures and donors?
The AG certified the popular name 'The Campaign Finance Act of 2016' as submitted. The AG rejected the proposed ballot title as too technical and substituted a new ballot title written in plain langua…
Did the Arkansas AG certify the popular name and ballot title for a revised proposal to add age, veteran or military status, sexual orientation, and gender identity to the Civil Rights Act?
No. The AG rejected both the popular name and the ballot title. The popular name was identical to one already certified for a different measure (2015-029), and the ballot title used the ambiguous phra…
Did the Arkansas AG certify Robert Reed's proposed constitutional amendment to legalize cannabis cultivation, sale, and possession statewide?
No. The AG rejected the popular name and ballot title for the proposed Arkansas Industrial Hemp and Medical Cannabis Amendment because the measure's text was internally ambiguous. The labels 'industri…
Did the Arkansas AG certify the ballot title for a citizen referendum to repeal Act 137 of 2015 (the Intrastate Commerce Improvement Act)?
No. The AG rejected the entire ballot title, popular name, and petition because the proposal was structured backwards. A statewide referendum under Ark. Const. art. 5 puts a legislative act before vot…
Did the Arkansas AG certify a proposed initiated act to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the Arkansas Civil Rights Act's protected classes?
Yes, but with a substituted ballot title. The AG accepted the popular name 'An Act Amending the Arkansas Civil Rights Act of 1993' as submitted, but substituted a cleaner ballot title that fixed spell…
Did the Arkansas AG certify an initiated act to lower the signature threshold for calling a local wet-dry alcohol election from 38% to 20% of qualified electors?
Yes. The AG approved the popular name 'An Act Concerning Local Option (Wet-Dry) Elections' as submitted, but substituted a tighter ballot title. The substitute reframed the change as reducing the sign…
Did the Arkansas AG certify a revised initiated act that would lower the wet-dry election petition threshold from 38% of registered voters to 25% of votes cast in the last governor's race?
No. The AG rejected the ballot title because it failed to highlight the change in the basis for computing signature requirements. A voter quickly scanning the title would see '38% to 25%' and assume t…
Did the Arkansas AG certify an initiated act that would lower the wet-dry election signature threshold from 38% of qualified electors to 25% of legal voters?
No. The AG rejected the ballot title because the term 'legal voters' in the proposed measure was undefined and ambiguous. The current Arkansas wet-dry statute uses 'qualified electors,' a defined term…
Did the Arkansas AG certify a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcohol statewide and repeal Arkansas's local-option election framework?
Yes. The AG certified the Arkansas Alcoholic Beverage Amendment as submitted, popular name and ballot title both. The amendment would have made alcohol manufacture, sale, distribution, and transportat…
Did the Arkansas AG certify the Campaign Finance Act of 2016 ballot title, requiring disclosure of campaign spending and donors above certain thresholds?
No. The AG rejected the proposed Campaign Finance Act of 2016 because the sponsor did not fix two critical problems flagged in the earlier rejection (Op. Att'y Gen. 2014-135). The term 'electioneering…
Why did the Arkansas AG reject the ballot title for the Arkansas Privacy Protection Act?
The AG rejected the proposal because the ballot title did not summarize the act's provisions, and the act itself was riddled with ambiguities and grammatical errors. The proposal also lacked the const…
Why did the Arkansas AG reject the Campaign Finance Act of 2016 ballot title?
The AG rejected it because the ballot title failed to summarize entire sections of the proposal, used 'electioneering communication' in a way that contradicts the term's standard meaning, and used par…
What did the Arkansas AG do with the Arkansas Hemp and Marijuana Amendment ballot title in 2014?
The AG certified the popular name as submitted and substituted a more suitable ballot title. The substituted title kept the proposal's substance while warning voters that the activities remain unlawfu…
Why did the Arkansas AG reject the popular name and ballot title for the 'Cultivate Hemp and Regulate Marijuana Amendment'?
The proposal had multiple internal ambiguities and misleading tendencies, including imperative-mood phrasing in the popular name, contradictory regulatory-authority language in the text, and silence i…
Did Arkansas's 2014 ballot push to legalize medical marijuana clear the AG's ballot-title gatekeeper?
Yes, for the popular name (certified as submitted); the AG substituted a refined ballot title and certified that. The measure cleared this stage with a cautionary note about ballot-title litigation ri…
Did the Arkansas AG certify a 2014 constitutional amendment legalizing cannabis statewide with a 1% THC dividing line between hemp and cannabis?
Yes for the popular name (certified as submitted). The AG substituted a refined ballot title to fix language about regulation versus prohibition of plant numbers and product manufacturing, and certifi…
Why did the AG reject the July 2014 version of the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act before later certifying a refined version in Opinion 2014-086?
Because the underlying text had multiple ambiguities: missing punctuation, incoherent sentences, undefined terms, internal definition conflicts, and a 'test all' rule that would make all cannabis unav…
Did the Arkansas AG approve the popular name and ballot title for Robert Reed's 2014 Arkansas Hemp and Cannabis Amendment initiative?
The AG approved the popular name 'The Arkansas Hemp and Cannabis Amendment' as submitted but substituted his own ballot title. The substitute clarifies the hemp/cannabis distinction, separates persona…
Did the Arkansas AG approve David Couch's May 19, 2014 ballot title for the Arkansas Alcoholic Beverage Amendment to make the entire state 'wet'?
Yes. The AG certified the popular name 'The Arkansas Alcoholic Beverage Amendment' as submitted and substituted his own ballot title. The substitute clarifies that alcohol sales would be lawful in the…
Why did Arkansas AG reject the 2014 ballot title for a statewide alcohol amendment that would have ended county-by-county wet/dry elections?
AG Dustin McDaniel rejected the proposed ballot title and popular name for the 2014 Arkansas Alcoholic Beverage Amendment because the measure's own text did not say clearly that it amended the constit…
Why did Arkansas AG reject the 2014 ballot title for the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Amendment proposed by Robert Reed?
AG Dustin McDaniel rejected the proposed ballot title for the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Amendment because the measure did not clearly declare itself a constitutional amendment and Section 2's grant o…
Why did the Arkansas AG reject the first 2014 ballot title for the statewide alcohol amendment proposed by David Couch?
AG Dustin McDaniel rejected the sponsor's first version of the Arkansas Alcoholic Beverage Amendment because the text used the disjunctive 'or' in places where it had to mean 'and,' omitted 'distribut…
Why did the Arkansas AG reject the Regnat Populus 2014 campaign finance and lobbying initiated act?
AG Dustin McDaniel rejected the Campaign Finance and Lobbying Act of 2014 because Section 4(A) (calling on Congress and the states to amend the U.S. Constitution to permit 'content-neutral limitations…
Why did the Arkansas AG reject the March 2014 Arkansas Cannabis Amendment for using 'legal residents' and leaving the legislature's role unclear?
AG Dustin McDaniel rejected the proposed Arkansas Cannabis Amendment because the term 'legal residents' was undefined and the measure was silent on whether the General Assembly retained any regulatory…
Why did Arkansas reject a cannabis-legalization ballot title in 2014?
AG Dustin McDaniel rejected the proposed Arkansas Cannabis Amendment because the text contained ambiguities he could not resolve in a ballot title: the opening verb was in the imperative mood, the mea…
Why did the Arkansas AG reject 'The Campaign Finance and Lobbying Act of 2014' ballot title?
AG Dustin McDaniel rejected Regnat Populus's combined campaign-finance, lobbyist cooling-off, and gift-ban initiative because Section 4's call for a U.S. constitutional amendment misstated federal law…
Why did the Arkansas AG reject the 'Ban the Prohibition of Cannabis' ballot title?
AG Dustin McDaniel rejected the popular name 'Ban the Prohibition of Cannabis' and its ballot title because the underlying measure failed to say it was a constitutional amendment, contained internally…
Why did the Arkansas AG keep rejecting League of Women Voters cannabis ballot titles in 2013-2014?
AG Dustin McDaniel rejected Lt. Col. Marjorie LeClair's 'Ban Prohibition of Cannabis' constitutional amendment ballot title for the ninth time, citing ongoing ambiguities in the measure's text. Each p…
Why won't the Arkansas AG approve a constitutional amendment requiring voter approval for any tax, fine, or fee increase?
Because the proposal as written was too ambiguous. It didn't define which 'taxes, fines, or fees' it covered (Verizon Arena ticket prices? Improvement district assessments?), which voters had to appro…
What does it take to get a proposed Arkansas constitutional amendment legalizing cannabis through the AG's ballot title certification?
Not just a clear stance. The AG rejected a 2014 cannabis amendment because the proposal cited 'the Arkansas Gross Receipts Tax Laws of 1941,' a chapter that does not exist under that name; the actual …
What did the Arkansas minimum wage increase ballot initiative actually propose, and why was it certified without changes?
The Attorney General certified the popular name and ballot title exactly as submitted, based on this opinion, for an initiated act that would raise Arkansas's minimum wage in three steps: from $6.25 t…
Why was Arkansas's seventh attempt at a cannabis-repeal ballot measure rejected, even after the sponsor fixed the earlier wording problem?
Rejected again, based on this opinion, though for a narrower reason than before. The sponsor fixed the earlier problem by adding operative language that actually repealed cannabis laws, but the new te…
Why did Arkansas's Attorney General reject a proposed ballot measure to repeal all state cannabis laws?
The Attorney General rejected the proposed measure, based on this opinion, because its text described what repealing cannabis laws 'would' do rather than actually enacting a repeal, and because its br…
Why did the Arkansas Attorney General rewrite, rather than reject, the ballot title for a 2013 initiative to repeal the state's marriage amendment?
The Attorney General certified a revised popular name and ballot title, based on this opinion, for a proposed constitutional amendment that would have repealed Arkansas's Amendment 83 (the state's ban…
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Attorney general opinions in Arkansas are written by the Arkansas Attorney General's office in response to questions from state agencies, legislators, and prosecutors. They are not binding like court decisions, but courts and agencies treat them as persuasive guidance on how state law applies. Every opinion above has a plain-English question and short answer, plus a link to the full original text.