Diversity advocates will keep on despite legislative setbacks, they say

Northwest Arkansas business leaders recently redoubled efforts to portray the region as a welcoming place for LGBTQ people and ethnic and racial minorities after a legislative session in which a number of bills affecting those populations became law.

Recent television and radio commercials and advertising on social media platforms by Walmart encourage people in the region to take a pro-diversity pledge to address systemic racism.

Then, on Friday, the nonprofit Walton Family Foundation and the Northwest Arkansas Council, a regional group of community and business leaders, joined a "friend of the court" legal brief along with others to get one of those laws overturned.

Most of those pro-diversity efforts outside the courts were underway long before this year's legislative session, organizers said. But one of the leaders of the Walton Family Foundation criticized legislative acts directly in recent public statements.

Tom Walton and his wife, Olivia, and their aunt, Alice Walton, announced on June 10 a $1 million commitment "to a new statewide fund to improve the quality of life of LGBTQ Arkansans." Four days later, Tom Walton, chairman of the Walton Family Foundation's Home Region Program Committee, issued a statement criticizing "recent discriminatory actions."

"As Arkansas celebrates Pride Month, we feel compelled to send a message of acceptance to the state's LGBTQ community, who now live their lives under new policies that discriminate against them," Tom Walton said in the June 14 statement, referring to the state's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community. "These efforts hurt our communities, our economy and the many LGBTQ Arkansans who are our colleagues, neighbors, friends and family. It also sends the wrong message to those willing to invest in or visit our state.

"The recent discriminatory actions are alarming. It saddens me to think of friends and colleagues who now not only question whether they belong here, but whether they are even safe."

Efforts to promote diversity in Northwest Arkansas didn't begin with the foundation, nor is the organization driving them today, said Emma Pengelly, interim home region program director of the foundation.

"We do not think of this as leading a charge, but as joining a cause," Pengelly said Friday. The foundation's goal is to support and amplify local groups, she said.

Recent legislative action "didn't drive our effort," Pengelly said, "but current events can help identify gaps our work can support."

The Walton Family Foundation announced a five-year plan Feb. 8 in which celebrating diversity was a centerpiece. The plan builds on efforts to promote diversity nationwide and in Northwest Arkansas in particular by Walton-funded groups, news accounts and foundation records show.

Those efforts go back years. For example, the pro-diversity group EmergeNWA began in 2013 with foundation support. The effort is also varied, Pengelly said. A major goal of the foundation is to ease high housing costs in the region. Those costs are making it harder for many to move here, she said.

The Northwest Arkansas Council posted the pro-diversity pledge July 22. Walmart was an early backer of the pledge, a council spokesman said Friday. The council encourages businesses, groups and individuals to commit to the pledge online.

"In the aftermath of the senseless killings of George Floyd and so many other Black lives throughout the country by law enforcement, the council led discussions on how to work together to foster a more welcoming region," Nelson Peacock, president of the Northwest Arkansas Council, said at the time the pledge was announced.

Floyd died in Minneapolis in May 2020 after a police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.

Jerry Cox, founder and president of the Family Council, a conservative advocacy group, said the message most Arkansans give hasn't changed. Arkansas is still the state where giant companies such as Walmart, Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt Transport thrived.

He said what changed is the expectations of "a liberal elite who think they're smarter and wiser."

"What are we doing that's unwelcoming?" Cox asked. "Saying that boys can't compete with girls in sports? That we don't want little boys made into little girls? Go to Mountain Home and ask them if they think that's a good idea.

"You will get the same answer you always would have gotten," he said. "No."

THE BILLS AT ISSUE

The bills in question are:

• Act 626, banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors. Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed the bill, but the 100-member House overrode it in a 72-25 vote. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit over the legislation. The Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce will file a "friend of the court" legal brief in support of the ACLU's argument to overturn the act, chamber President Randy Zook confirmed in a telephone interview Tuesday.

• Act 953 gives the state attorney general a cause of legal action to use against schools that knowingly allow athletes assigned the male sex at birth to participate on female sports teams.

• Act 462 allows health care providers to opt out of procedures they don't agree with based on their religious or moral beliefs. Sponsor Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, said it would most likely apply to abortion. Critics argued that the bill could also apply to birth control, service to the disabled or others. That bill also passed in the House with 72 votes.

• Four acts -- 249, 728, 736 and 973 -- regarding election law. The League of Women Voters and the immigrant rights group Arkansas United filed suit against all four, saying they were discriminatory against the disabled, voters who need translation of voting materials, the elderly, the poor and minority groups.

• The Legislature managed with difficulty to enact a hate crime law -- making Arkansas the 48th of the 50 states to do so. Such laws enhance penalties on crimes that arise out of prejudice or hatred of the victim's ethnicity, sexual orientation or other distinctions.

The attempt to pass an Arkansas hate crime bill, which failed in previous years, lasted as long as the Legislature was in regular session this year. The finished bill omitted any reference to a "hate crime." Votes against the final version of what became Act 681 came largely from supporters of earlier proposals who called the measure that passed a diluted, hollow gesture.

The day the Legislature voted to overturn the veto on Act 626, the Walton Family Foundation released a statement by Tom Walton which said, in part: "We are alarmed by the string of policy targeting LGBTQ people in Arkansas. This trend is harmful and sends the wrong message to those willing to invest in or visit our state. We support Gov. Asa Hutchinson's recent veto of discriminatory policy and implore government, business and community leaders to consider the impact of existing and future policy that limits basic freedoms and does not promote inclusiveness in our communities and economy."

Rep. Robin Lundstrum, R-Elm Springs, sponsored Act 626.

"That's a bill to protect children," she said Friday. "Let them grow up. Then they can make adult decisions."

Gender blocking or enhancing treatments are life-changing with irreversible effects, she said. She pointed to news accounts on how the Karolinska Hospital in Sweden, among other centers in that country, stopped hormonal treatment of youths under 18 earlier this year. Finland has added restrictions on such treatments, and Great Britain has had court cases where those treated as transgender in their youth later sued those who administered the treatment.

"I'd be happy to meet with them and discuss any concerns they have," Lundstrum said of the foundation.

On Friday, the brief filed in the ACLU lawsuit to overturn Act 626 described the law as "an unconstitutional assault on the rights of transgender people." Groups besides the foundation and the Northwest Arkansas Council joining in the brief included the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, Acxiom LLC, and The Interpublic Group, Acxiom's parent company. The ACLU's suit is in U.S. District Court in Little Rock.

"TIME WILL TELL"

Just-passed state laws criticized by LGBTQ groups have had at least one effect -- protest.

"I would have come anyway, but those laws convinced me to bring more people with me," said Brad Lawless of Bentonville, a participant June 24 in Fayetteville's first Trans March to support transgender Arkansans.

About 500 walked along Dickson Street to a rally at the town center, where organizers and speakers such as Jewel Hayes of Fayetteville.

The just-passed laws brought the trans groups allies and a degree of support they never had before, said Richard Gathright, director of Northwest Arkansas Pride, a LGBTQ rights group.

The outpouring of support is appreciated, Hayes said, but that does not change the fact that the biggest reaction of transgender Arkansans to the law's passing is "heartbreak."

As for any other effects, "time will tell" if recent legislative acts will hurt economic recruiting to the state, said Cameron Smith of Cameron Smith and Associates, a business talent recruiter whose firm has attracted businesses to the region for 27 years. The laws are new and have made no impact on recruiting yet, he said.

California's attorney general banned state-funded travel to Arkansas and four other states June 23 for what he described as discriminatory acts by those states' legislatures.

"To my knowledge, no one has been dissuaded from moving to or investing in Arkansas" over the Legislature's recent actions, Zook said. Still, controversies did affect getting issues such as a hate crime law through the Legislature, he said.

"We couldn't get a rational discussion about some of these issues," Zook said.

On passing the hate crime law in particular, "some of the national groups in favor of it did us more harm than good," he said. "They kept the temperature and the volume up. It made passing the kind of bill they wanted impossible."

Five Arkansas-based marketing companies were called and asked for comment on the issue of what, if any, effect the passage of the bills would have on the state's image. All five declined comment.

SOME PROGRESS

Diana Gonzales Worthen of Fayetteville is a founder of Hispanic Women of Arkansas, which has encouraged acceptance of diversity in the region since forming in 1999. She is also a member of the steering committee of EngageNWA, a group formed in 2013 "on the principle that diverse communities perform better economically, and in our increasingly global economy, the regions that embrace these challenges will thrive," according to the group's website.

Asked for her perspective on this year's legislative session and diversity, Worthen cited the same bills noted in an earlier interview of Mireya Reith, founder and executive director of Arkansas United, an immigration rights group based in Springdale and one of the groups suing to overturn recently enacted election laws.

Progress was made this session, Worthen and Reith said. There were serious setbacks and the resulting hate crime bill was disappointing, they said, but promoting diversity and inclusion in Arkansas was never going to be a sudden success.

"We're not going to stop," Worthen said.

• Act 513 of 2021 allows college graduates who are beneficiaries of the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to get teaching certificates. Rights groups have sought this change for years.

DACA grants legal residency to people who were brought into the country as children and are here illegally. Children of immigrants in school will now have more teachers "who look like them and who can talk to their parents in their language and who know their culture," Worthen said. This helps make immigrants feel included in the community, encourages getting college degrees and boosts the earning potential for the immigrant community at large, she said.

• Act 217 makes legal residents who are not citizens eligible for the Arkansas Governor's Scholars program.

• Act 746 grants a state occupational or professional licensing entity to issue a license "to anyone who fulfills the requirements Federal Form I-766 United States Citizenship and Immigration Services-issued Employment Authorization Document, known popularly as a 'work permit.'" This removes another obstacle to migrants trying to make a good living in Arkansas, Worthen said.

Reith said pro-diversity bills with some additional benefit, such as increasing the supply of teachers, stood a good chance of passing. Those that were straight social statements favoring diversity, such as the hate crime bill, succeeded or failed on purely partisan lines, she said.

"It was very painful to watch allies who cooperated with us on passing some of these bills say they understood the need for others, but those issues were just too polarizing," Reith said.

PARTISAN DIVIDE

Sen. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, supported hate crime legislation in this and previous legislative sessions and became one of the harshest critics of some bills that eventually passed this year.

Expressions of support at home and nationwide are all fine and good but what was really missing during the legislative session was strong support in the state Capitol, Leding said.

"The business community was satisfied with a face-saving move on hate crimes," he said. He acknowledged that passing anything stronger was challenging but that support could have been stronger.

"You don't get to put a rainbow flag up one month out of the year, then cut a check in contributions to the same legislators who support these type of discriminatory bills and say you support diversity," he said, referring to business contributions to local lawmakers and to the rainbow flag symbol of the LGBTQ community.

Leding said partisan primaries are the biggest factor making "culture war" bills harsher. Winning a primary is tantamount to winning an election, and that leaves a few hundred highly partisan voters deciding who the winner will be in most legislative contests, he said.

Voter participation in party primaries is much lower than in general elections, election records show. For instance, no party primary race in Benton or Washington county for the state House on March 3, 2020, had more than 3,778 votes cast, secretary of state records show. By comparison, every House race in Benton or Washington county in the Nov. 3 general election had less than 10,000 votes cast. One race drew 18,534 ballots.

Therefore, Leding said, lawmakers fear losing a primary more than they worry about losing a general election. That leads to them taking more extreme positions on "wedge issue" bills, he said.

Cox disagreed and said Arkansas always was and remains a socially conservative state. This was true when Democrats had the majority as late as 2012, he said.

"If lawmakers were out of step with the people of Arkansas, they'd soon know it," Cox said. "When it's all said and done, the Legislature reflects the people of Arkansas."

CORRECTION: The parent company of Acxiom LLC is The Interpublic Group. The wrong parent company was listed in an earlier version of this story.