Date: May 5, 2026

Amendment 80 Fixes Jurisdiction: Circuit Courts Retain Original Jurisdiction Over Facial Constitutional Challenges; Legislature Cannot Confer Exclusive Original Jurisdiction on the Court of Appeals

I. Introduction

Bryan Norris, on Behalf of Himself and All Similarly Situated Persons; Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative, Inc.; and Restore Election Integrity Arkansas brought suit in the Independence County Circuit Court after Independence County’s Quorum Court rescinded a voter-adopted county ordinance requiring elections to use hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots. The defendants included Independence County officials (the county clerk and election commissioners) and justices of the peace involved in the rescission. The State of Arkansas ex rel. Tim Griffin intervened.

Although the complaint asserted multiple theories (including lack of authority to rescind the initiative, a facial constitutional challenge to Ark. Code Ann. § 14-14-918(b), an Arkansas Civil Rights Act claim, and mandamus), the case quickly turned into a structural constitutional dispute about court power: whether the General Assembly could enact Act 975 of 2025 (codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 16-13-201(a)(2)) to remove circuit-court original jurisdiction over facial constitutional challenges and place “exclusive original jurisdiction” for those challenges in the Arkansas Court of Appeals.

The circuit court dismissed the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction under Act 975. On appeal, Norris narrowed the issue to a single question: whether Act 975 is constitutional under Amendment 80 and separation-of-powers principles.

II. Summary of the Opinion

The Arkansas Supreme Court held Act 975 unconstitutional. Reading Amendment 80’s text as determinative, the court concluded:

Amendment 80, § 6(A) makes circuit courts “the trial courts of original jurisdiction of all justiciable matters not otherwise assigned pursuant to this Constitution.”
Amendment 80, § 5 limits the Court of Appeals to “appellate jurisdiction” as allocated by Supreme Court rule.
Amendment 80, § 10 lets the General Assembly establish jurisdiction only “unless otherwise provided in this Constitution,” so it cannot override § 5 and § 6(A).
Amendment 80, § 9 permits legislative amendment of certain Supreme Court rules, but rules do not create jurisdiction and cannot convert an appellate court into a trial court.

Because Act 975 was the sole basis for the dismissal, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. The court expressly declined to decide other defenses (immunity, service, personal jurisdiction, venue, pleading sufficiency) because the circuit court had not ruled on them.

III. Analysis

A. Precedents Cited

1. Standard of review and constitutional review framework

The court characterized the appeal as a “pure question of law,” reviewing de novo under State v. Good Day Farm Ark., LLC, which in turn cited Corbitt v. Ark. State Univ. and Cherokee Nation Bus., LLC v. Gulfside Casino P'ship. This framing mattered: the court was not weighing facts about the county ordinance or election logistics; it was interpreting the Constitution’s allocation of judicial power.

On the presumption of constitutionality, the court followed Thurston v. League of Women Voters of Ark. and Ward v. Hutchinson: statutes are presumed constitutional and are struck only for “clear incompatibility” with the Constitution. The court nonetheless found that incompatibility here was direct and textual.

2. Preservation and subject-matter jurisdiction

Respondents argued Norris had not preserved some constitutional arguments below. The court treated the dispute as one of subject-matter jurisdiction, relying on Coones v. State, Edwards v. Edwards, and Herron v. Ark. Dep't of Corrs. for the rule that subject-matter jurisdiction can be raised at any time, including first on appeal. This ensured the constitutional challenge to Act 975 could be reached even if briefing below was imperfect.

3. Limits on appellate-court jurisdiction and the Supreme Court’s allocation authority

The court treated Amendment 80, § 5 as a jurisdictional ceiling for the Court of Appeals—appellate only—and used precedent describing how Supreme Court rules allocate appellate business between the two appellate courts:

Bales v. City of Fort Smith (explaining that Rule 1-2 outlines appellate jurisdiction allocation and that the Court of Appeals has appellate jurisdiction as determined by Supreme Court rule).
Bridgeman v. State (Court of Appeals acknowledging that Supreme Court rules outline respective appellate jurisdiction).
Brock v. Eubanks (dissent noting Amendment 80, § 5 vests the Supreme Court with authority to determine the Court of Appeals’ jurisdiction—understood by the Norris court as allocation of appellate jurisdiction, not creation of original jurisdiction).

The opinion also invoked structural history: Amendment 80, § 19(C) treats the Court of Appeals as a continuation of the prior court, and Moose v. Gregory explained the Court of Appeals’ purpose—assisting with the appellate caseload, not exercising trial-court power.

4. Circuit courts as courts of original jurisdiction; defining “original” versus “appellate”

The court relied heavily on its own post-Amendment 80 jurisprudence reiterating the breadth of circuit-court original jurisdiction under § 6(A), citing (among others) Rolfe v. State, Taylor v. Ferguson, Comstock v. State, Reynolds v. Thurston, Kimbrough v. Grieve, and older authorities such as Foster v. Hill, Ellis v. Reynolds, Noble v. Norris, and State Game & Fish Comm'n v. Sledge. The court’s use of this line of cases served two functions:

To show § 6(A) has been consistently treated as a broad constitutional grant of trial-court power.
To emphasize that any carve-outs from circuit-court original jurisdiction must come from the Constitution itself (the opinion gave examples such as Ark. Const. art. 7, § 28 and Amendment 80, § 2(D)(2)-(5)).

Conceptually, the court leaned on Reynolds v. Thurston and Spatz v. City of Conway for the definition of original jurisdiction as the “power to decide a matter in the first instance,” contrasting it with appellate jurisdiction as review of a lower tribunal.

5. Statutory “workarounds” via rule amendment and the nature of court rules

A central defense of Act 975 was that the legislature could “amend” Supreme Court rules under Amendment 80, § 9 to effect the jurisdictional change. The court rejected that by drawing a line between (a) procedural rulemaking and (b) jurisdiction. In reinforcing that Arkansas Supreme Court rules govern procedure, the opinion cited Broussard v. St. Edward Mercy Health Sys., Inc.. It also relied on Edwards v. Edwards (in a different portion of the opinion) to underscore that jurisdiction is distinct from procedure.

6. Canons and interpretive method

The court used the negative-implication canon (“expressio unius”) to read “appellate jurisdiction” in Amendment 80, § 5 as excluding original jurisdiction, citing Buonauito v. Gibson (Wood, J., concurring in part) and Scalia & Garner’s Reading Law. The opinion stressed the canon must be applied with care, but found the text left “no room for doubt.”

7. Justiciability and the court’s choice to decide the constitutional issue

The court noted a practical oddity: if Act 975 were valid, facial challenges would begin in the Court of Appeals, raising the prospect that the Court of Appeals would decide its own original jurisdiction. The court nevertheless retained the case because it involved constitutional interpretation, first impression, and substantial public interest, citing Ark. Sup. Ct. R. 1-2(b)(1), (c)(1), (4) & (6).

8. Issues not reached

The Supreme Court declined to reach other defenses because the circuit court had not ruled on them, citing Ark. Lottery Comm'n v. Alpha Mktg.. This matters on remand: Act 975 being unconstitutional restores jurisdiction, but it does not decide whether Norris’s claims ultimately survive other threshold defenses.

9. Contextual precedent on the ballot measure

The opinion referenced Mitchell v. Norris only for background: it had upheld the ballot title and affirmed certification of the measure. That earlier case did not control the jurisdiction question here, but it explains why the rescission and the statutory authority to rescind became the focal points of litigation.

B. Legal Reasoning

The court’s reasoning is best understood as a three-step constitutional hierarchy analysis:

Text fixes judicial power. Amendment 80, § 6(A) grants circuit courts original jurisdiction over all justiciable matters unless the Constitution assigns otherwise. Amendment 80, § 5 grants the Court of Appeals appellate jurisdiction (allocated by Supreme Court rule), not original jurisdiction.
Legislative power is conditional. Amendment 80, § 10 authorizes the General Assembly to establish jurisdiction “unless otherwise provided in this Constitution.” Because §§ 5 and 6(A) “otherwise provide,” § 10 cannot be used to re-route an entire class of cases away from circuit courts.
Rules cannot do what the Constitution forbids. The court rejected the attempt to treat § 9 (legislative power to amend certain court rules) as a back door to jurisdictional change. Supreme Court rules allocate the exercise of existing appellate jurisdiction; they do not create new jurisdiction. Therefore, the legislature cannot indirectly convert the Court of Appeals into a court of first instance for facial challenges by “amending” a rule.

The opinion’s separation-of-powers thrust is structural: the legislature shapes policy, but it cannot re-engineer the Constitution’s allocation of judicial power. The people, through Amendment 80, made “a deliberate choice” to constitutionalize the basic jurisdictional architecture, limiting later legislative tinkering.

C. Impact

Immediate procedural impact: facial constitutional challenges to Arkansas statutes, code provisions, and regulations remain properly filed in circuit court in the first instance. Act 975 cannot be used to dismiss such cases for lack of circuit-court subject-matter jurisdiction.
Institutional impact: the Court of Appeals remains an appellate tribunal; it cannot be assigned trial-court functions without constitutional amendment. This preserves the constitutional design that trial courts develop records and appellate courts review them.
Legislative drafting impact: jurisdictional innovations must respect Amendment 80’s “unless otherwise provided” limitation. Where the Constitution itself assigns jurisdiction, statutes cannot reassign it—especially not in a way that contradicts the appellate-only character of the Court of Appeals.
Rulemaking impact: even where the legislature can amend court rules under Amendment 80, § 9, that power is confined to procedure and cannot be used to manufacture subject-matter jurisdiction. The decision draws a bright line between procedural governance and constitutional jurisdiction.
Litigation strategy impact: parties can expect defendants to continue raising immunity and other threshold defenses (expressly reserved on remand), but Act 975 is no longer a viable early “jurisdictional” dismissal tool for facial challenges.

IV. Complex Concepts Simplified

Facial constitutional challenge: A claim that a law is unconstitutional in all of its applications. The remedy sought is typically invalidation of the provision itself, not just as applied to one person.
Original jurisdiction: The power to hear and decide a case first—to take evidence, resolve factual disputes, and issue an initial judgment. Under Amendment 80, § 6(A), this is the circuit court’s default role.
Appellate jurisdiction: The power to review a lower court’s decision for legal error. Under Amendment 80, § 5, the Court of Appeals’ constitutionally described role is appellate.
Subject-matter jurisdiction: A court’s authority to hear a category of cases. If a court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction, it cannot proceed, and the issue can be raised at any time (as emphasized through Coones v. State and its progeny).
Procedural rules vs. jurisdiction: Procedural rules govern how cases proceed (filing, deadlines, motions, evidence). Jurisdiction governs whether a court has constitutional authority to decide a type of dispute. This case holds that legislative power to amend certain court rules cannot be used to change constitutional jurisdiction.
“Unless otherwise provided in this Constitution”: A constitutional “override clause” limiting legislative power: the legislature may act only in spaces the Constitution has not already occupied with a conflicting rule. Here, §§ 5 and 6(A) were treated as occupying the field.

V. Conclusion

Bryan Norris v. Independence County, Arkansas establishes a clear structural rule: the General Assembly cannot strip circuit courts of Amendment 80 original jurisdiction over facial constitutional challenges or confer exclusive original jurisdiction on the Court of Appeals. Amendment 80, § 10’s grant of legislative authority over jurisdiction yields where the Constitution itself assigns jurisdiction, and Amendment 80, § 9’s rule-amendment mechanism cannot be used to accomplish a jurisdictional transformation.

The broader significance is institutional: Arkansas’s Constitution fixes the fundamental division between trial-court adjudication and appellate review. Statutory efforts to reallocate that division—especially by converting an appellate court into a court of first instance for a category of constitutional litigation—are unconstitutional.