The Arkansas Supreme Court denied on Thursday the final charge in a lawsuit that sought to prevent votes on a casino ballot initiative from being counted in the November election, ensuring an amendment aimed at revoking the license for a casino in Pope County stays on the ballot.

The denied count claimed that the amendment’s popular name and ballot title were insufficient.

The ruling came three days after the court denied another charge brought by Cherokee Nation Entertainment — which owns the Pope County license — that sought to throw out the more than 100,000 signatures that Local Voters in Charge, the initiative’s sponsor, collected.

“This is a great day for the state of Arkansas to get that final confirmation from the state Supreme Court that our ballot initiative, our ballot proposal, is a valid, clean proposal that should be voted on by the state of Arkansas and the votes counted,” said Local Voters in Charge spokesman Hans Stiritz during a media conference in front of the Supreme Court building in Little Rock.

“The Supreme Court was unequivocal in stating that it couldn’t be more simple and more straightforward and directly presented to the voters of Arkansas on the vote and

that the votes should count,” Stiritz continued.

Allison Burum, spokesperson for Legends Resort & Casino Arkansas, said in a statement that “We know Arkansans will reject this sneaky amendment.

“It is important for voters to know that Issue 2 is the only thing standing in our way of breaking ground on the $300M Legends Resort & Casino near Russellville, an economic development super project that is licensed, county-approved, and bringing 1,000 jobs and millions in new tax revenue. Vote against Issue 2.”

The lawsuit, filed Aug. 1, was essentially part of a proxy war between the Cherokee Nation and Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and asked the state Supreme Court to knock the proposed amendment to the state constitution off the Nov. 5 ballot.

If the proposal passes, it would repeal the Arkansas Racing Commission’s authority to issue a casino license in Pope County and revoke any casino license issued for Pope County before Nov. 13, 2024. The amendment also would require future casino licenses to be approved by voters in a special countywide election.

Local Voters in Charge, the sponsor of the proposed casino amendment, is funded by the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, which has a casino in Pocola, Okla., just across the state line from Fort Smith.

The court rejected Cherokee Nation Entertainment’s “argument that the popular name and ballot title are insufficient because they fail to disclose that (Cherokee Nation Entertainment) has already been issued a license and that Choctaw will greatly benefit from this measure,” according to the ruling, written by associate Justice Karen Baker. “A popular name need not identify all future scenarios.”

Regarding Cherokee Nation Entertainment’s argument that “the popular name misleads voters into believing that the Proposed Amendment does not revoke an existing license,” Baker wrote that the name “is primarily a useful legislative device that need not contain the same detailed information or include exceptions that might be required of a ballot title.”

Baker went on to write that “although the popular name does not explicitly state that the Proposed Amendment will revoke an existing casino license for Pope County, the ballot title states that ‘if the Arkansas Racing Commission … issues a casino license for Pope County, Arkansas prior to the effective date of this Amendment, then said license is revoked(.)’

“Thus, the popular name, when read together with the ballot title, contemplates the very scenario before us and is not misleading.”

Unlike Monday, Thursday’s ruling was accompanied by both a dissent and a concurring opinion.

The dissent, written by Associate Justice Shawn Womack, said that the popular name and ballot title are misleading because neither “contemplates revoking an already existing license that has been issued by the Arkansas Racing Commission.

“Both use future tense language indicating that the vote will affect action taken prospectively without revealing to voters that a vote in favor of the amendment will, in fact, repeal action that has already been taken prior to any votes being cast.”

In response to Womack’s dissent, the majority ruling said that at “the time the popular name and ballot title were drafted and certified, there was uncertainty as to the status of the license because it had not yet been awarded.

“In order to comply with the dissent’s position, the drafters would have been placed in the impossible situation of predicting an uncertain future event. But most importantly, to state that a license had been previously issued would have been factually inaccurate at the time.”

The concurring opinion, written by Associate Justice Rhonda Wood, was only one paragraph long.

“I concur with the majority’s result,” Wood wrote. “I find myself in the strange predicament of agreeing in part with the majority and in part with the dissent. Both the majority and dissent go too far in interpreting the actual amendment. That is not our role at this stage. In reviewing a popular name and ballot title, we do not engage in interpretation of the proposed amendment itself.”

In response to Wood, the majority wrote that “this is too strict of a view of this court’s role. Instead, we are called to ensure that the ballot title conveys an intelligible idea of the scope and import of the proposed amendment.

“This requires more than what the concurrence suggests. Therefore, we disagree that we have ‘(gone) too far.’”

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said Thursday he was gratified with the court’s ruling.

“I respect the Court’s decision and am pleased the Court agrees with my office that the ballot title and popular name for the proposed casino amendment are not misleading,” he said. “This issue will now be decided by the voters.”

The proposed initiative would change Amendment 100 to the Arkansas Constitution, which was approved by voters in November 2018. It authorized what is now called Southland Casino Hotel in West Memphis and Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort in Hot Springs to expand into full-fledged casinos. The amendment also allowed the Racing Commission to license a casino each in Jefferson and Pope counties, and authorized sports betting at the casinos.

In June 2019, the commission awarded the Jefferson County license to the Oklahoma-based Downstream Development Authority of the Quapaw Nation. The commission subsequently voted to transfer the license to Saracen Development LLC.

The casino in Pine Bluff is now called Saracen Casino Resort.

The casino license in Pope County has been a source of turmoil for Pope County and the state, resulting in numerous court cases.

Billions of dollars are collectively wagered at the state’s casinos each year.

On June 27, the Racing Commission voted unanimously to award the Pope County casino license to Cherokee Nation Entertainment. An application from Mississippi-based Gulfside Casino Partnership was not accepted for being “incomplete” because its application didn’t include a letter of support from the county judge or a letter of resolution from the Pope County Quorum Court.

Natalie Ghidotti, vice chairwoman of the Investing in Arkansas committee that opposes the amendment, spoke at a media conference about an hour after Stiritz spoke.

While her group was “certainly disappointed” in the court’s ruling, Ghidotti said “we definitely have a lot of faith in Arkansans to vote no on issue two, and that they’re going to see through what this is really about, which is really an out of state billionaire,” referring to the Choctaw Nation’s funding of Local Voters in Charge.

“The difference is the Cherokee Nation Entertainment actually has business in Arkansas and is doing business in Arkansas and is funding things in Arkansas,” Ghidotti said. “That’s the biggest difference.”

According to LVC’s latest campaign finance filing, it had received $8.8 million from the Choctaw Nation as of Sept. 26. Investing in Arkansas had received $11.6 million from Cherokee Nation Businesses by the end of September.

Local Voters in Charge’s news release following the court’s ruling ended by asking “the out-of-state gambling interests funding the campaign against Issue 2: what are you afraid of? If your casinos are so beneficial to a local community, why not trust local voters to decide this issue?”

Stiritz was asked how LVC squared that comment when its funding comes from Choctaw.

“I’ll first say we’re obviously very grateful for the support that we’ve gotten for our cause,” Stiritz said. “You’ve got really two sides of this issue being financed, both by out of state gambling interests, and so I really think it’s beyond the pale for them to call us out for receiving that support when the entirety of their support, $9 million of support, was offered by an out of state casino to fight our amendment to squash the rights of local voters to stand up for what’s happening in their communities.”

“So I think that becomes even all the more reason why local voters should have this decision in their hands, and again, not the politicians or the gambling interests that are pushing so hard against this (initiative),” Stiritz said.