Arkansas Supreme Court Associate Justice Shawn Womack asks Chief Justice Karen Baker a question during a livestreamed business meeting on Thursday, January 23, 2025. (Screenshot)
Arkansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Karen Baker and her fellow justices failed to settle their disagreements over the scope of her authority after a rare public meeting on Thursday.
Baker faced more than an hour of questions from her colleagues in a meeting that was livestreamed, a break from the court’s standard practice of holding business meetings privately.
Baker was sworn in as Arkansas’ first elected female chief justice Jan. 1. Since then, she and five associate justices have repeatedly attempted to override each other’s conflicting decisions.
“I don’t understand why the court has been functioning as if there are only five members,” Baker told the other justices during Thursday’s meeting.
“Because the chief has been functioning as if there was only one,” Associate Justice Shawn Womack replied.
Baker attempted within half an hour of being sworn in to appoint three new members to the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission, which investigates complaints about the conduct of judges and the justices. She then attempted on Jan. 3 to fire 10 Administrative Office of the Courts staff.
Associate Justice Courtney Hudson has been the only associate justice not to participate in her colleagues’ per curiam orders, on Jan. 3 and Jan. 6, declaring Baker’s actions null and void and saying she did not have the authority to make them on her own.
Baker responded on Jan. 8 with an administrative order declaring the two per curiam orders invalid and citing Arkansas Constitutional Amendment 80, which states in Section 4: “The Supreme Court shall exercise general superintending control over all courts of the state… These functions shall be administered by the Chief Justice.”
The five justices who signed the other orders said Baker’s order was only a dissenting opinion and carried no legal effect.
On Thursday, Baker doubled down on her stance on Amendment 80 when asked by the other justices what gives her the authority to make unilateral decisions without consulting the court.
“If your claim to all this power is under Section 4 of Amendment 80, I don’t think that gets you to what you did the first week of January,” Womack said.
AOC Director Marty Sullivan was among the 10 employees Baker tried to fire. The five-justice majority said in its Jan. 3 order that the chief justice cannot fire some judiciary employees without the full court’s approval, citing the portion of state law that says the AOC director serves “at the pleasure of the Supreme Court.”
In her Jan. 8 order, Baker cited the same law but emphasized the provision that gives the chief justice the power to nominate the AOC director. Her predecessor, former Chief Justice John Dan Kemp, nominated Sullivan, and Baker said she planned to nominate her choice for the position. She had not done so as of Friday.
Associate Justice Rhonda Wood said Baker owed Sullivan and his staff an apology for her attempts to fire them. Wood also mentioned that she and Baker both served on the court under the three previous chief justices. Wood lost a runoff election for the chief justice position to Baker in November.
“None of those three justices signed orders and made those appointments like that, and none of those three justices would have fired outstanding employees, [whose firings] would have ground the entire state system to a halt, without even notifying a member of the court,” Wood said.
Womack asked Baker why she did not notify the court that Thursday’s meeting would be livestreamed. Baker responded that the justices should have been aware she had announced it would be a publicly available meeting.
Wood later made a motion for the court to reaffirm the decisions it made at a Jan. 6 business meeting, which Baker and Hudson did not attend, because Baker did not recognize the legitimacy of the court doing business without her input.
Baker initially refused to recognize the motion for a vote, saying she still saw the meeting as illegitimate, but a majority of the court voted to appeal this decision and put Wood’s motion back on the table. Wood’s motion then passed.
‘All over the place’
Associate Justice Cody Hiland asked Baker if she believed the statute pertaining to the AOC director conflicts with Amendment 80 and therefore is unconstitutional.
Associate Justice Nicholas Bronni, the court’s newest member who was also sworn in Jan. 1, asked Baker the same question about the statute giving the Supreme Court power to appoint a maximum of three JDDC members.
Baker answered no to both questions. She said she interpreted both statutes “in a way that would be consistent with Amendment 80,” meaning both give her the authority to administer the duties ascribed to the Supreme Court.
Bronni asked Baker if this meant she believed she could hire and fire the Supreme Court clerk and his staff. Baker replied no because Amendment 80 gives the whole court the power to choose its clerk.
“In one context with the same language, you’re saying that the rest of us are irrelevant and you get to choose no matter what we say, and in the other context you said maybe you don’t, even if it’s the same language,” Womack said.
In addition to state law, Amendment 66 to the Arkansas Constitution gives the Supreme Court authority to appoint three judges to the JDDC. Womack said the court attempted to make new appointments to the panel late last year, but the effort was delayed, including by Baker.
“Was that done intentionally so you could make that your very first action as chief justice, to try to get control of the commission that was investigating you?” Womack asked.
Baker said she is not the only justice the JDDC is investigating and did not respond further to the question.
Circuit Judge H.G. Foster of Conway, the judge who swore in Baker as chief justice at midnight on Jan. 1, was one of the three blocked JDDC appointees. Before 12:30 a.m., Baker drew up the appointment orders for Foster and two other judges, one of whom had just retired from the bench. JDDC members are required to be sitting judges.
Hiland asked Baker if she believed Amendment 80 allowed her to “just decide unilaterally to go the other way” on administrative decisions approved by a majority of the court.
Baker initially said no, saying “the custom and practice is to get a sense of” the full court’s opinion on administrative matters.
Hiland rephrased the question a minute later, specifying whether Baker could disregard the court’s administrative decisions “absent a constitutional or statutory authority delegated to” the chief justice.”
This time, Baker said yes.
Her colleagues continued to express frustration.
“You’re talking about custom and practice as if it’s this glue that holds us together, and yet you’re all over the place on custom and practice,” Womack said.
He gave the example of Baker’s dissent in a September 2024 case that led to Hudson being referred to the JDDC for what the rest of the Supreme Court, including then-Chief Justice Kemp, called “flagrant breaches of confidentiality” by filing emails of other justices into evidence in a lawsuit. The case began when Hudson sued to block the release of emails between her and Lisa Ballard, the former head of the judiciary’s Office of Professional Conduct, that Arkansas Business requested via the Freedom of Information Act.
Womack said he disapproved of the fact that Baker released her dissenting opinion three days after the majority’s decision in the FOIA case and that he first heard about it through social media, not from Baker herself.
Baker’s dissent said the majority had “a fundamental misunderstanding” of the FOIA and had damaged the Supreme Court’s credibility. She made transparency a focus of her successful runoff campaign for chief justice.
In December, as chief justice-elect, Baker entered Sullivan’s office in the Justice Building when he was not present, prompting a complaint to Supreme Court Police by court employees, Arkansas Business reported. The publication obtained video footage via FOIA that showed Baker, Hudson and Commerce Department Chief of Staff Allison Hatfield in the hallway outside AOC offices; Hatfield is Baker’s former law clerk.
Baker later told Supreme Court Chief of Police Pete Hollingsworth that she did not want the video footage “going around,” Talk Business & Politics reported Dec. 17. Hollingsworth was among the AOC employees Baker tried to fire on Jan. 3.
The Department of Transformation and Shared Services recognized the Supreme Court majority’s Jan. 3 order blocking the 10 employees’ firing, Secretary Leslie Fisken told Baker in a Jan. 8 memo.
In response, Baker emailed Fisken: “It is simple Marty Sullivan is terminated. If the justice system were a corporation, I am the CEO. The remaining employees, noticed in the previous letter, may remain on the payroll for the present time while they reapply for their positions.”
The Advocate obtained the correspondence via a FOIA request.