Circuit and district court judges in Arkansas have the authority to decide whether to allow firearms in their respective courtrooms, according to an administrative order released today by the Arkansas Supreme Court. The high court’s pronouncement comes amid contentious litigation about the issue of guns in courthouses generally.
The order, recorded as Administrative Order 23, is simple in its terms. “All judges shall have the inherent authority to control security in their courtrooms,” it says, before specifying that this includes the power to “promulgate orders regulating, restricting, or prohibiting the possession of firearms within their courtrooms and other rooms in which the court and/or its staff routinely conducts business.”
Administrative Order 23 comes less than a week after the Supreme Court admonished Circuit Judge Morgan “Chip” Welch for comments he made in a May 7 order after the high court reversed an earlier decision in which Welch had found attorneys had no right to bring firearms into courthouses and courtrooms in the state.
In their April 18 order reversing Welch’s decision, the Supreme Court specifically noted the appellants had abandoned their arguments regarding lawyers carrying firearms in courtrooms, so that decision was limited to the issue of guns in courthouses. Rather than waiting for a new case regarding guns in courtrooms to be filed and work its way through the judicial system, however, today’s administrative order seeks to preemptively answer the question by allowing each judge to make that decision for his or her courtroom.
Yet, with two justices issuing a rare dissent to the court’s issuing an administrative order, it is unclear whether today’s order will fully resolve the issue.
Justice Shawn Womack, joined by Justice Barbara Webb, wrote a two-page dissent to the one-page order. In it, Womack said the court announced in April that it would not address the issue of guns in courtrooms until the issue was raised in a future lawsuit, and, moreover, the Legislature had already provided a framework allowing guns in courtrooms, so it was not up to the Supreme Court to decide otherwise.
While a two-person dissent might not generally mean much against a five-person majority, Womack’s dissent here is notable because his 2022 dissent in a similar case about allowing lawyers to take guns in Pulaski County District Court ultimately wound up being the basis for the majority decision in the court’s April 18 order. With Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointing two new justices next January to replace justices who ran for other positions on the court, it is not impossible to imagine the court having four votes willing to rescind the new administrative order early next year.
Administrative Order 23 and Womack’s dissent are available here.