Summary
The US court of appeals which, in Kenney-Shawa’s brief, became in 2022 the highest-level court to consider anti-boycott legislation when it upheld Arkansas’s law against The Arkansas Times (lines 143, 167, 211).
Details
- Its ruling is binding on Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota (line 143). The brief describes it as “known to be one of the most conservative circuit courts in the country” (line 211).
- Procedure as the brief gives it: a three-judge panel overturned the dismissal of the Arkansas Times suit, finding the statute “imposes a condition on government contractors that implicates their First Amendment rights”; the state requested rehearing by the full court, which ruled against the newspaper (line 211).
- Holding as the brief gives it: requiring someone to “give up a constitutional right” for a government contract does “impose an unconstitutional condition”, but First Amendment protections apply only to the expressive actions accompanying a boycott, the act of economically boycotting being “non-expressive” conduct (line 213). Justice Jane Kelly dissented on the ground that the statute’s reliance on prior speech and actions could deter protected speech unrelated to boycotts, “thereby limiting what a company may say or do” (line 215).
- The brief dates the ruling both to July 2022 (Executive Summary, line 143) and to June 2022 (lines 167, 211), placing it two days before June 24, 2022 (line 229); the conflict is recorded on the source page under Open questions and not reconciled here.
Related pages
Challenging Anti-Boycott Legislation in the US, Arkansas Times, NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., Anti-boycott legislation