Page:Jegley v. Picado, 349 Ark. 600 (2002).pdf/20

Rh Magruder v. Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, 287 Ark. 343, 698 S.W.2d 299 (1985), we heard a challenge to a regulation by a plaintiff who claimed no specific threat under the regulation. There, a fisherman challenged an AGFC regulation prohibiting the taking of black bass under fifteen inches from an Arkansas lake. The fisherman did not allege that he was either penalized for the conduct or threatened with enforcement of the regulation. This court allowed the fisherman to challenge the regulation, holding:

The appellant alleged he was a licensed fisherman who frequently fished Lake Maumelle. Nothing in the record showed the commission challenged that allegation. If the commission's regulation is to be enforced it will have an effect on persons who fish Lake Maumelle regardless of who owns the lake. One whose rights are thus affected by a statute has standing to challenge it on constitutional grounds. Thompson v. Arkansas Social Services, 282 Ark. 369, 669 S.W.2d 878 (1984); Sweeney v. Sweeney, 267 Ark. 595, 593 S.W.2d 21 (1980). The same rule applies to official acts other than statutes, Rogers v. Paul, 328 U.S. 198, 86 S. Ct. 358, 15 L. Ed. 2d 265 (1965), and thus it applies to the regulation in question here.

Id. at 344, 698 S.W.2d at 300.

In ''Bennett v. National Assoc. for the Advancement of Colored People'', 236 Ark. 750, 370 S.W.2d 79 (1963), this court held that a justiciable controversy was presented when the NAACP filed suit seeking a declaratory judgment to the effect that four Acts of the legislature were unconstitutional. There was no allegation that anyone had been prosecuted or specifically threatened with prosecution under the Acts. We said:

[W]e are convinced that the Supreme Court of the United States would hold that the Act was aimed at the NAACP and required a compulsory disclosure of information which was proscribed by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Bates v. City of Little Rock, supra. The whole tenor of the decision in the case of NAACP v. Button leads us to the inevitable conclusion that this Act No. 13 would be promptly declared threatened with prosecution for violation of the state's abortion statutes, citing Epperson v. Arkansas, supra).