In recent years our Arkansas GOP supermajority and governor have put in place several acts that restrict certain nonprofit and for-profit activities. These acts prohibit entities that want to do business with the state from exercising their First Amendment free-speech rights on issues relating to Israel and the ongoing starvation and massacres in Gaza that many global organizations are calling war crimes.

Arkansas' Act 710 of 2017 specifically prohibits public entities from entering into contracts with companies that boycott Israel. There are some minor exceptions, but they often come with a 20 percent reduction in contract value.

This same Act 710 of 2017 was challenged by the Arkansas Times. In 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals (8th Circuit) ruled against the Times, a ruling, by the way, limited to the seven midwestern states that fall under their jurisdiction. The Appeals Court had found that boycotts were not covered by free-speech rights of the First Amendment. And in 2023, the Supreme Court chose not to hear the Arkansas Times appeal.

Ironically, the Supreme Court in 1982, in the case NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware upheld Americans' right to boycott. But in 2025, boycotts aren't seen as a form of protected free speech?........

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