ATTORNEY TOM MARS

If a few peaceful protesters and transgender students scare the Conway School Board and its superintendent, they’d best pay attention to attorney Tom Mars, whose clients have included a business coalition, star athletes, a former governor and Walmart.

Mars is chatty on Twitter, where he’s made a couple posts that should be a warning to the wayward board waging an anti-transgender crusade.

Advertisement

“Any school board member with an IQ higher than room temperature will read that tweet and immediately realize that the school board needs to quit worrying about trans kids and bathrooms and start focusing on education,” Mars said today.

Advertisement

Mars didn’t want to go into much detail yet about the “army of highly experienced lawyers,” but said, “We are having discussions with prominent lawyers outside the state of Arkansas who have an interest in bringing an end to this discrimination against transgender kids.”

Mars and others also are concerned about a school board proposal — policy 5.5.2 — that would ban or restrict the teaching of dozens of concepts in the school district, including some related to our nation’s racial history, sexuality and gender. The school district has said the board is not currently considering the proposal even though it asked its attorney to draft it, but the district, which is ignoring parts of the state’s open-meeting law, has provided no record of the board ever voting against the proposal or tabling it.

Advertisement

Mars, who has formerly represented Mike Huckabee, credited Holly Dickson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, for her work on the school board issues.

Earlier this week, Mars posted another cautionary tweet:

Advertisement

Earlier this year, Mars successfully represented a business coalition of prominent Arkansas companies and foundations in persuading the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a lower court’s temporary hold on an Arkansas law banning gender-affirming care for transgender children. A federal trial of the lawsuit challenging the ban is scheduled to resume in U.S. District Court in Little Rock on Nov. 28.

Advertisement