Judge Fox rules against AG Griffin in Board of Corrections FOIA lawsuit

Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Tim Fox ruled against Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin Monday (Jan. 22) in a lawsuit Griffin filed claiming the Board of Corrections improperly hired outside counsel in its ongoing lawsuit against the state and Gov. Sarah Sanders.

You can read the ruling here.

Griffin’s office on Dec. 15 filed a lawsuit against the BOC alleging it violated the state’s Freedom of Information Act when it went into executive session to suspend Corrections Secretary Joe Profiri and when it hired outside legal counsel. The board hired Abtin Mehdizadegan, an attorney in the Little Rock office of Hall Booth Smith, in a case before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Patti James. Griffin filed the lawsuit in the Pulaski County Circuit Court, part of an ongoing conflict that began when the BOC rejected demands by Gov. Sarah Sanders to add 500 beds to the prison system.

Fox initially ruled in mid-December saying Griffin was “in clear violation of his mandated constitutional and statutory duty to either represent the state defendants or initiate the special counsel procedure” as outlined by state law.

“Not only has the Attorney General acted in contravention of his statutory duties to represent the state defendants, by using his discretion to apparently not invoke the special counsel procedure, he is apparently attempting to deliberately deprive his state clients of any legal representation of any nature or kind,” Fox said at the time.

Fox gave Griffin 30 days to either reach an agreement with Mehdizadegan to continue representing the BOC, or to begin the process to provide the BOC with special counsel.

On Monday, Fox said “the plaintiff failed to make material or good faith efforts to initiate the statutory procedure set forth in Ark. Code Ann. 25-16-702 for the defendants to obtain special counsel.”

“This matter is dismissed without prejudice,” Fox said, also noting that if a future case was filed, his ruling in this matter would need to be included.

“We are preparing an immediate appeal to the Arkansas Supreme Court,” Griffin said in a statement to Talk Business & Politics.

This lawsuit is separate from a pending case involving the Board of Corrections and two new state laws that the BOC claims violate the state Constitution.

The lawsuit stems from when Gov. Sanders and Griffin went public Nov. 17 in a press conference during which the governor blasted the BOC for rejecting most of a request to provide more than 600 additional beds in the prison system. The BOC is the governing body of the state’s prison system. BOC members at the time made it clear that the prison system lacked the staff to responsibly add more beds.

Sanders and Griffin have argued that Acts 185 and 659 passed in the 2023 Legislative Session give the governor direct authority over leadership at the Department of Corrections. The BOC filed a lawsuit in Pulaski County Circuit Court challenging the constitutionality of sections of Acts 185 and 659 with Mehdizadegan as the board’s outside counsel.

Judge Patti James ruled Friday (Jan. 19) that the two acts violated the state Constitution. Griffin is appealing that ruling to the Supreme Court.