Colonel Conrad Reynolds

Big win for Clint Lancaster on behalf of Bryan Norris at the Arkansas Supreme Court. The constitutional challenge to the law that allowed the Independence County Quorum Court to overturn the will of the people on paper ballots will have to be heard in Circuit court.

From ChatGPT:

This is a major procedural and constitutional win for Bryan Norris in the Independence County case.

The Arkansas Supreme Court filed its majority opinion in CV-26-116, 2026 Ark. 91, and the result is: “Reversed and remanded.” That means the Supreme Court overturned the Independence County Circuit Court’s dismissal and sent the case back to circuit court for further proceedings.

What the Supreme Court decided

The circuit court had dismissed Norris’s case because of Act 975 of 2025, which tried to move certain facial constitutional challenges out of circuit court and give “exclusive original jurisdiction” to the Arkansas Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court said that is unconstitutional.

The Court held that:

1. Circuit courts have original jurisdiction.
Under Amendment 80, circuit courts are the trial courts of original jurisdiction for justiciable matters unless the Arkansas Constitution says otherwise.

2. The Court of Appeals has appellate jurisdiction, not original trial-court jurisdiction.
The Supreme Court said Amendment 80 gives the Court of Appeals appellate jurisdiction only, and the General Assembly cannot convert it into a trial court for facial constitutional challenges.

3. Act 975 crossed the constitutional line.
The Court said Act 975 “does precisely what Amendment 80 forbids” by removing a class of cases from circuit-court original jurisdiction and placing them in the Court of Appeals.

What this means for Bryan’s case

This does not mean the Supreme Court already ruled that the Independence County ordinance repeal was unlawful.

It means Bryan’s case was wrongly dismissed. The case is now alive again and goes back to the Independence County Circuit Court.

The claims can now proceed, including the arguments that:

The quorum court lacked authority to nullify the voter-approved ordinance.

Arkansas Code § 14-14-918(b), as used to repeal the ordinance, is unconstitutional.

The county’s actions violated civil rights.

A writ of mandamus should issue to enforce the voter-adopted ordinance.

What happens next

On remand, the circuit court will likely have to address the issues it never reached because it dismissed the case on jurisdiction. The Supreme Court specifically noted that other defenses—such as sovereign immunity, statutory immunity, service, personal jurisdiction, venue, and pleading sufficiency—were not decided and may be litigated back in circuit court.

Bottom line

This is a strong win because Bryan knocked out the jurisdictional wall that stopped the case. The Supreme Court said the Legislature cannot strip circuit courts of their constitutional authority to hear these kinds of constitutional challenges.

The case now goes back to Independence County Circuit Court, where the real fight over the ordinance repeal can continue.