Brown v. Arkansas Department of Finance & Administration

180 F. Supp. 3d 602, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47663, 2016 WL 1420998
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Arkansas
DecidedApril 8, 2016
DocketCase No. 5:15-CV-05213
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 180 F. Supp. 3d 602 (Brown v. Arkansas Department of Finance & Administration) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Brown v. Arkansas Department of Finance & Administration, 180 F. Supp. 3d 602, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47663, 2016 WL 1420998 (W.D. Ark. 2016).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

TIMOTHY L. BROOKS, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Now before the Court are the parties’ cross-Motions for Summary Judgment: one filed by Defendants Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration (“DFA”) and Loretta Turner, who is the [605]*605Northwest Arkansas District Manager for the Revenue Division of the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration (Doc. 19), and one filed by Plaintiff Rev. Tom Brown (Doc. 47). Once the Motions were fully briefed and ripe for decision, the Court held a hearing on the Motions on April 7, 2016, at which time the parties presented oral argument and responded to questions posed by the Court. The Court then ruled from the bench that, as the parties agreed that no genuine, material issues of fact were in dispute, and the ease may be decided as a matter of law, Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. 19) should be GRANTED, and Rev. Brown’s Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. 47) should be DENIED. The Mowing Order sets forth in greater detail the reasons for the Court’s decision in favor of Defendants on summary judgment. To the extent anything in this Order differs from what was announced from the bench, this Order will control.

I. BACKGROUND

Rev. Brown filed his Complaint pro se on September 4, 2015 (Doc. 1), along with a Motion for Temporary Restraining Order (Doc. 3) and Motion for Immediate Emergency Hearing (Doc. 4). "What prompted Rev. Brown to seek the Court’s assistance that day was an incident that occurred the previous day, September 3, 2015, at the Fayetteville office of the Revenue Division of the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, located at 965 South Razorback Road (“Revenue Office”). According to Rev. Brown—who is a Rastafarian minister who states he uses marijuana as part of his faith’s religious activities1—he was present at the Revenue Office soliciting signatures for a statewide ballot initiative called “The Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act.” Rev. Brown had been soliciting signatures for this ballot initiative since March of 2014, doing so from a table set up under a pear tree, in a grassy area located several feet from the front door of the Revenue Office and at the edge of the Revenue Office parking lot. See Doc. 60-3, pp. 5-9 (Brown Dep.). Rev. Brown ordinarily stationed himself in this spot during the Revenue Office’s normal business hours in order to talk with patrons of the Revenue Office and persuade them to sign the ballot initiative.

At some point in the afternoon on September 3rd, Defendant Loretta Turner, the District Manager of the Revenue Office, confronted Rev. Brown and informed him that the DFA had recently established a no-solicitation policy at its revenue offices, and that he would have to leave.2 See Doc. 19-1 (Turner Aff.); Doc. 4-1 (Brown Aff.). Rev. Brown refused to leave, citing his First Amendment right to solicit ballot initiative signatures, at which point local police were called to the scene. When the police arrived, they informed Rev. Brown that if he did not cease his solicitation of signatures and leave the premises, he would be arrested. The officers provided him with an incident report at his request, and only then did Rev. Brown pack up his materials and leave.

Rev. Brown believed he was entitled to an emergency hearing on the issue of whether he could be lawfully banned from collecting signatures at the Revenue Office because, in his view, time was of the essence in collecting signatures for the ballot initiative. He claimed that he had been given a deadline of July 1, 2016, to submit [606]*606100,000 signatures for the ballot initiative, and the Revenue Office was a prime, “invaluable” spot to collect the necessary signatures, as it was a place where county residents reported in order to renew drivers’ licenses and vehicle registrations and pay fees and taxes. (Doc. 4-1, pp. 2-3).

A few days after the Motions for Temporary Restraining Order and for Emergency Hearing were filed, the Court entered an Order (Doc. 10) denying the latter. In doing so, the Court also found that Rev. Brown had failed to establish that he would suffer immediate and irreparable injury unless the Court issued a restraining order ex parte, in light of the fact that the signatures he needed to collect were, by his own admission, due ten months later, and he was not prohibited from collecting signatures in general, at other locations. The Court then converted Rev. Brown’s Motion for Temporary Restraining Order into a Motion for Preliminary Injunction and ordered Defendants to respond to the Motion within 21 days of receiving service of process.

In response to the Court’s Order, Defendants collectively filed an Answer (Doc. 17), a Response to the Motion for Preliminary Injunction (Doc. 18), and a Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. 19), along with a Brief in Support (Doc. 20), and Statement of Facts (Doc. 21). The Court then issued an Initial Scheduling Order (Doc. 22) and set a case management hearing for November 10, 2015. For his part, Rev. Brown hired an attorney who entered his appearance in the case on October 15, 2015, and successfully moved the Court to continue the case management hearing and grant him additional time to respond to Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. Rev. Brown’s Response in Opposition to the Motion for Summary Judgment (Docs. 29, 30) was ultimately filed on November 16, 2015, and a separate Pretrial Memorandum (Doc. 34) was filed on December 3, 2015, the day of the case management hearing.

Rev. Brown became dissatisfied with his counsel’s representation and made an oral motion at the case management hearing to represent himself pro se. The Court deferred ruling on the motion and instead conducted the hearing with counsel present. The Court determined that Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment was premature in light of the fact that the parties had not engaged in any discovery, and the Court was well persuaded by Rev. Brown’s counsel that a short period of expedited discovery was in order before the parties would be prepared to argue both the Motion for Summary Judgment and the Motion for Preliminary Injunction. Accordingly, the Court set hearings on these two Motions, as well as an expedited discovery deadline and supplementary briefing schedule.

The rift between Rev. Brown and his counsel was never repaired following the case management hearing, and on December 9, 2015, Rev, Brown’s counsel withdrew from the case at Rev. Brown’s request. See Doc. 41. Rev. Brown once again represented himself pro se, and almost immediately filed a second Response to Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. 42), which contained an argument styled as a “Counterclaim for Summary Judgment.”

Upon receiving Rev. Brown’s second Response, Defendants requested clarification as to how to treat the Counterclaim for Summary Judgment, and the Court entered a text-only Order on December 21, 2015, stating that it intended to treat Rev. Brown’s second Response to the Motion for Summary Judgment as a supplement to the original Response his attorney filed on November 16, 2015 (Doc. 29), and Rev. Brown’s Counterclaim for Summary Judg[607]*607ment as an affirmative cross-Motion for Summary Judgment.

To further confose the procedural, posture of the case, Rev. Brown filed a separate Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
180 F. Supp. 3d 602, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47663, 2016 WL 1420998, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/brown-v-arkansas-department-of-finance-administration-arwd-2016.