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First Amendment

Lawyer arrested at state bar meeting for carrying petitions reaches settlement

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 22, 2025, 2:58 pm CST

An Arkansas lawyer who was arrested for carrying ballot petitions at a state bar meeting in June 2024 has reached an out-of-court settlement that calls for payment of $200,000 to her lawyers.

Lawyer Jennifer Standerfer of Bentonville, Arkansas, settled with the Arkansas Bar Association; the city of Hot Springs, Arkansas; its police department and a city commission that owns the convention center where Standerfer was arrested for solicitation, the Arkansas Times reports. The settlement followed a mediation.

A joint statement by the parties said they “regret the fact of Ms. Standerfer’s arrest,” and they acknowledge that the lawyer had a constitutional right to carry the petitions.

Standerfer had argued that the First Amendment protected her. She had carried the petitions into the Hot Springs Convention Center, at first in a small wagon with a sign and on a second day by clipboards. She didn’t seek signatures but made the petitions available to anyone who wanted to sign them, she told KARK.com and the Arkansas Advocate after the meeting.

One proposed ballot measure would broaden the reach of the state’s Freedom of Information Act and stiffen penalties for violations, according to the Arkansas Advocate. The other would amend the Arkansas Constitution to create a government obligation to share information.

Standerfer was a committee member of the group sponsoring the petition drive, Arkansas Citizens for Transparency. After Standerfer’s arrest, the group obtained materials about the arrest through the state’s Freedom of Information Act, KARK.com reported.

Video obtained by the group showed officers telling Standerfer that she was being asked to leave. When she refused, officers handcuffed the lawyer and removed her from the event. She was not formally charged.

A state bar representative had texted the convention center asking staff members to ask Standerfer to leave because of the petitions, documents indicated. The bar had said after Standerfer’s arrest, no one authorized to speak for the association had sought Standerfer’s removal.

Standerfer had explained why she backed greater transparency in an April 2024 opinion column for theNorthwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

“The FOIA is how we know what our government is doing,” she wrote. “It is how we hold politicians accountable, and we should do a whole lot more than question any politician who says that we should sacrifice our rights under the FOIA in the name of ‘efficiency.’”

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U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court orders reconsideration of appellate decision on youths carrying guns

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 15, 2024, 2:46 pm CDT

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday told a federal appeals court to reconsider its decision that blocked a Pennsylvania ban on youths openly carrying guns during a state of emergency.

The high court vacated the decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Philadelphia and directed it to reconsider in light of U.S. v. Rahimi.

In the June Rahimi decision, the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on gun possession by those who are subject to domestic-violence restraining orders.

The 3rd Circuit ruled in January that youths who are 18 to 20 years old are among the people protected by the Second Amendment, and they can’t be barred from openly carrying guns during a state of emergency.

Pennsylvania requires people carrying concealed firearms to be at least 21 years old and to have a license. Those who want to openly carry guns are generally allowed to do so. But in states of emergency, they must have a license, or they must qualify under other exceptions. The practical effect of those laws is to ban those who are 18 to 20 years old from openly carrying guns during states of emergency.

When the suit was filed, Pennsylvania had been in a state of emergency for nearly three years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the opioid addiction crisis and Hurricane Ida.

CNN and Bloomberg Law have coverage of the Supreme Court’s order in the case, Paris v. Lara.