Kristine Gerhard Baker

In 2019, the Arkansas state legislature passed legislation increasing the signature requirement for newly qualifying political parties from 10,000 to three percent of the total votes cast for governor in the last general election. At the time, this raised the number of signatures required to 26,746. The new legislation also shortened the deadline to meet the petition requirements and required new political parties to hold a convention to qualify their candidates. The Libertarian Party of Arkansas sued Secretary of State John Thurston (R) over these changes, calling the new legislation unconstitutional.^[7][8]

On July 3, 2019, Judge Kristine Gerhard Baker, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, issued a preliminary injunction barring the state from enforcing the new legislation. In her opinion, Baker wrote, "There is no record of evidence before the Court that explains the State’s interest – let alone a compelling one – in requiring new political parties to meet the 3% requirement, file a petition more than a year in advance of the general election, and collect signatures in a 90-day window."^[9][10]

On July 12, 2019, attorneys for the state petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to reverse Baker's decision. Instead, the court decided to affirm Baker's preliminary injunction order on June 18, 2020. This temporary injunction blocked the new legislation from taking effect before the 2020 election. ^[11][7]

The 2019 legislation required political parties to receive at least three percent of the vote in the top ballot race each election cycle in order to maintain their qualification. Since Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian Party of Arkansas' 2020 presidential candidate, received one percent of the vote, the legislation required the party to re-qualify for ballot access in 2022. In response, the Libertarian Party of Arkansas sued Secretary of State Thurston again, and the case went back to Judge Baker and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

On September 30, 2022, Judge Baker struck down the same legislation she had temporarily enjoined in 2019. In her opinion, Baker wrote that the law’s provisions “collectively impose a severe burden on plaintiffs’ rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and that the State of Arkansas is unable to demonstrate that the statutes are narrowly drawn to serve a compelling state interest.”^[12][8]

In 2015, Arkansas enacted the Abortion-Inducing Drugs Safety Act (Act), which created new requirements for physicians in Arkansas to prescribe abortion-inducing medications in order to terminate a pregnancy. Section 1504(d) of the Act, the subject of the appeal in this case, required:

Days before the Act was to take effect, Planned Parenthood of Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma, which does business as Planned Parenthood Great Plains (PPGP), and one of PPGP's physicians, Dr. Stephanie Ho, filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking a judicial order to prevent enforcement of the Act. On March 14, 2016, Judge Kristine Gerhard Baker issued a preliminary injunction enjoining enforcement of the Act after holding that the Act's contract-physician requirement "provided few, if any, tangible medical benefits over Planned Parenthood's continuity-of-care protocols such that 'the [S]tate's overall interest in the regulation of medication abortions through the [contract-physician] requirement is low and not compelling.'"^[14][15] Arkansas appealed Judge Baker's order to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

On July 28, 2017, Judge Raymond Gruender vacated Judge Baker's order and remanded the case for further proceedings. Judge Gruender held that,^[14]