Before 1991, no Black person had ever been elected to a judgeship in Arkansas. Then a federal consent decree redrew five judicial circuits into subdistricts, and Black voters began choosing judges for the first time. On Nov. 5, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin asked a federal court to end it.
Griffin filed his motion in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, two days after the midterm elections. It targets the decree from Hunt v. Arkansas, a suit filed in 1989 by Black residents who said the state’s system of electing judges across large at-large districts shut them out. The subdistricts cover Judicial Districts 1, 2, 6, 10 and 11 West, and the judges chosen in them sit on circuit and chancery courts, where people are sentenced, evicted and lose custody of their children.
“Dividing voters based on race is wrong and unconstitutional,” Griffin said. “Whether it’s judicial districts, schools or any other institution, the government should not sort people based on the color of their skin.” His motion argues the decree “violates the Constitution by dividing voters into subdistricts solely because of the color of their skin,” and it leans on the Supreme Court’s 2026 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, the decision that ended Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which won the decree, is fighting the motion for the original plaintiffs. Judge Olly Neal, one of them, said that without the decree, “Plaintiffs will not have an equal opportunity to continue to elect judges that are representative of their communities.” Judge Eugene Hunt, whose name is on the case, said “the socioeconomic conditions and inequities that existed at the time the decree was entered more than thirty years ago, still exist.”
Marie Hollowell, president of the NAACP’s Little Rock branch, put the stakes plainly: “I don’t think we can afford to keep allowing the civil rights act to be dismantled.” Barry Jefferson, president of the Arkansas NAACP State Conference, questioned the timing of a filing made right after Election Day.
Griffin’s argument is that the Constitution forbids drawing lines by race. The record the decree answers is different. The decree exists because the state’s own map, not Black candidates’ qualifications, kept the bench closed until a court made Arkansas change it. Every Black judge elected in those five circuits since 1991 won under the rules Griffin now calls unconstitutional.
That is the use Callais is being put to: a ruling about congressional maps cited to unwind a remedy that opened Arkansas courtrooms to Black voters. A state that wants colorblind elections should explain why the colorblind ones elected no Black judge in all the years before the decree.
The decree stays in force while the case is decided. A federal judge will rule on whether to keep it, change it or end it, and no timeline has been set. If the court sides with Griffin, the next judicial elections in those five circuits will be run on the same kind of map that kept Black Arkansans off the bench before 1991.
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