Issue De Jour: Administrative Order No. 20

I recently complained that the Texas Legislature enacted an Act that required tow truck operators in that state to have a valid Texas driver's license. Its purpose was to deter illegal immigrants from obtaining work, but it put a bunch of tow truck operators that live in Texarkana, Arkansas out of work.

Today, the local bar (in conjunction with private process servers on both sides of state line) is grumbling about Administrative Order No. 20, which was adopted by the Arkansas Supreme Court on March 1, 2008. It requires that in order to serve process in Arkansas, the person must hold a valid Arkansas driver's license. There are very few, if any, local process servers that live in Arkansas. The next step, some believe, is that Texas will create a rule that mirrors ours, which will only put up another fence between our bordering community.

Amendment 80, §9 to the Arkansas Constitution sets out a procedure in which some rules may be amended by the Legislature, but it's not allowed in this scenario. Sincethe Legislature can't amend it, we can only hope that the order gets revisited at some point.