Arkansas bans non-discrimination laws

by Jon Green 

Buzzfeed reported that Arkansas’ House of Representatives passed SB202, a bill that blocks localities in the state from passing anti-discrimination legislation of their own.
The bill does not limit itself to blocking protections for the gay community, and instead preempts any effort by a city or county in the state to pass non-discrimination protections not already granted by state law.
With the bill’s passage, Arkansas joins Tennessee in becoming the only two states with laws that actively ban non-discrimination on a local level.
One of the reasons the bill is, as Arkansas ACLU legal director Holly Dickson put it, “designed to permit as much discrimination as possible in the state,” because it’s illegal to pass a bill specifically prohibiting LGBT protections. That’s been true since the Romer v. Evans ruling in 1996, in which the United States Supreme Court held that a Colorado amendment preventing LGBT citizens from having protected status in state anti-discrimination bills violated the Equal Protection Clause.
In other words, if you want to pass an anti-anti-discrimination bill, you have to allow for equal discrimination under the law, and that’s exactly what SB202 does.
Governor Asa Hutchinson has said that he will neither sign nor veto the bill, thereby allowing it to go into effect automatically. Hutchinson’s explained his “pocket signature” of the bill as follows:

I recognize the desire to prevent burdensome regulations on businesses across the state. However, I am concerned about the loss of local control. For that reason, I am allowing the bill to become law without my signature.

The allusion to “burdensome regulations” references the pretense for the bill’s passage, as the bill’s sponsors expressed concern that the presence of anti-discrimination protections in a given city or county would discourage businesses that would otherwise wish to set up shop in Arkansas. Nevermind that, as Arkansas Democrat Charlie Tucker pointed out, an overwhelming majority of Fortune 500 companies have anti-discrimination policies of their own.
After all, businesses in competition for labor know that fewer and fewer workers want to live in communities where it’s illegal for themselves and their coworkers to be protected from being fired due to their race, religion or sexual orientation.
So, if anything, Arkansas’ new bill discourages large companies from coming to the state.
Furthermore, it does so by preventing local communities’ from protecting their citizens from discrimination. This makes SB202 the epitome of paternalistic, big-government encroachments that the patriotic, freedom-flinging Republicans of Arkansas are supposed to rise up against.
But of course, the motivation for the bill has nothing to do with economics or limited government and everything to do with assuaging red state voters’ concerns that they might not get to bully people they don’t like.
But not everyone in Arkansas is going along with their state’s new pro-discrimination policy. Earlier last week, the Arkansas town of Eureka Springs stood up to the state senate’s passage of SB202 by rushing through an anti-discrimination bill specifically protecting LGBT individuals. When warned that right-wing groups would likely sue the town for violating the newly-passed SB202, Eureka Springs city councilor Mickey Schneider responded: “Bring it on!“