Supreme Court denies attorney general of the United States's request to accelerate appeal in corrections board conflict

The Arkansas Supreme Court structure
Benjamin Hardy

Last month, state Attorney General Tim Griffin revealed his office would appeal 2 recent circuit court rulings in favor of the Arkansas Board of Corrections, opening another chapter in the constitutional showdown between the corrections board and Gov. Sarah Sanders and her allies.

Together with his notification of appeal of Circuit Judge Tim Fox's dismissal of Griffin's Freedom of Information Act suit versus the corrections board, Griffin also filed a motion to accelerate that appeal-- or, alternatively, a movement to disqualify the board's attorney, Abtin Mehdizadegan. (Typically, the attorney general would represent the Board of Corrections in a lawsuit, but in this case the board hired outdoors counsel. Griffin, after all, has made it clear for months he is not on the board's side.) Whether Mehdizadegan's hiring was proper belongs to Griffin's ongoing dispute with the corrections board, and Fox has so far agreed the board.

Because the court refused to expedite consideration, Griffin's appeal brief is due by April 10. The board's action will be due 30 days after Griffin's is submitted.
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Griffin's motion to disqualify Mehdizadegan stays pending. According to Mehdizadegan, other procedural concerns are likewise on the horizon.
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" We will need to offer a reaction to the Motion to Disqualify," Mehdizadegan told the Arkansas Times by means of email. He will likewise likely file a motion to dismiss the appeal, he stated, because "the order from which they appeal is tentative-- it was dismissed without bias-- and because, by abandoning all pending and unresolved claims in the FOIA action (all of them), they have actually effectively abandoned subject jurisdiction."

The 2nd case is a claim the corrections board filed against Sanders in December over who has constitutional authority in the state prison system. Circuit Judge Patti James ruled in favor of the board in January. The cases overlap so much that Mehdizadegan thinks the 2 appeals must be consolidated and treated as a single case by the Supreme Court.
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" I previously asked [Senior Assistant Attorney General] Noah Watson whether they would accept combine and to my continued representation on appeal," Mehdizadegan said. "Noah objected to both demands."

Mehdizadegan said he discovers the chief law officer's objection to consolidating the cases "surprising, since consolidation would have the impact of saving money and time for everyone." He stated that he does "not believe the chief law officer cares at all about taxpayer expenditure." Why? "If he did," Medizadegan stated, "he would not have actually sued his own customer."
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The attorney general's office did not react to a request for comment concerning both today's choice and the concern of combining the two cases.