And now we wait.
Fayetteville voters passed an anti-discrimination law last week, with 53 percent favoring the proposal.
The big question now is whether the local ordinance is enforceable and, more importantly, whether this prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity will stand.
The issue is already before the local circuit court in a lawsuit brought by foes of the ordinance in the days just prior to the election.
While Judge Doug Martin denied a motion to halt the election, asserting that the motion came too late, the merits of the lawsuit are yet to be considered.
The basic arguments being pressed by Protect Fayetteville, the organization that opposed the ordinance, are these:
(bullet) The ordinance was improperly referred to voters by the City Council because Mayor Lioneld Jordan provided the deciding vote to suspend rules to allow the council to consider the ordinance on June 16, when the council voted to refer it to voters.
(bullet)Act 137, a state law approved by lawmakers earlier this year, prohibits cities and counties from enacting or enforcing "an ordinance, resolution, rule or policy that creates a protected classification or prohibits discrimination on a basis not contained in state law."
Mind you, Fayetteville City Attorney Kit Williams has counter arguments for both.
He points out state law giving a mayor a vote on council issues "when his or her vote is needed to pass any ordinance, bylaw, resolution, order or motion." Jordan's vote was definitely the deciding vote to move that particular issue to final consideration.
As for the state law, Williams and other attorneys maintain that the necessary legal basis for the local ordinance is in other state law passed to address bullying in public schools and domestic-abuse shelters. That law mentions sexual orientation and gender identity.
The language is contained "in state law," although not the most recent law.
Whether that's enough of an argument will have to be resolved in court.
For the record, state Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has weighed in with a non-biding opinion that the Fayetteville ordinance and others like it passed in Eureka Springs, Little Rock, Hot Springs and Pulaski County are all unenforceable because of Act 137.
Unless a court stops the city, Fayetteville will proceed to create a seven-member Civil Rights Commission.
The mayor wants the members selected and the commission in place by Nov. 7, when the ordinance is supposed to take effect.
That will or won't happen, depending on how and when Judge Martin rules on Protect Fayetteville's lawsuit. Either side could also appeal any decision from Martin.
So it will be awhile yet before any of this is really resolved.
And then there is this:
The Legislature, in passing Act 137, clearly didn't recognize that there was some other state law that protected people based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Or, if anyone did know about the older law, they, too, thought the new law would prevail.
Act 137 passed with strong support in the Legislature. The makeup of the Legislature is today what it was then and will remain so until 2017.
So, regardless of how the courts might ultimately rule on whether Fayetteville's ordinance (or any of the others) can be enforced, there's the chance lawmakers will revisit the issue and write the prohibition more plainly.
That presumes arguments used to pass Act 137 will be successful again, the primary one being that having different laws in some localities somehow disrupts interstate commerce.
They publicly argued about the need for a uniform state law, although many in the public thought their real reason was to deny protections to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population.
The issue is, but shouldn't be, controversial. People, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, should be treated equally under the law.
If all of Arkansas can't accept that, those places that are accepting ought to be able to have their own ordinances.
Local control makes good sense sometimes.
And, maybe, if more cities and counties pass their own anti-discrimination laws, lawmakers will view the assertion of local control differently.
Some numbers to ponder:
Fayetteville voters ratified the new ordinance by an unofficial vote of 7,666 to 6,860. That's a turnout of only 13 more people than cast votes in the December 2014 election on an earlier anti-discrimination ordinance.
Yet the outcome was decidedly different. Voters rejected the first issue.
So, who voted in these elections? That is knowable and someone out there is crunching the numbers, comparing the voter lists from each election.
The natural presumption is that essentially the same voters turned out for both elections.
If so, minds must have been changed with the new proposal, which included significant exemptions and won backing from key players in the business community who opposed the first version.
As those changes were hammered out, not everyone on either side of the issue was completely satisfied; but the compromise obviously worked.
Commentary on 09/13/2015