# Act 710 of 2017 (SB 513) — Prohibition on Public-Entity Contracting With and Investing in Companies That Boycott Israel > *The enrolled text of Arkansas Act 710 of the 2017 Regular Session, formerly Senate Bill 513. Codified at **A.C.A. § 25-1-501 through § 25-1-504** (Title 25 [State Government], Chapter 1 [General Provisions], **Subchapter 5 — Prohibited Contracts and Investments**). Approved by Governor Asa Hutchinson on March 27, 2017; effective August 1, 2017 (no emergency clause; standard 91-day-post-session effective date). Sponsored by Senator Bart Hester (R, SD-001) in the Senate and Representative Jim Dotson in the House. Senate passage 29-0; House passage 69-3. The statute is the anti-BDS contracting framework underlying the "Israel $1k" line on the ASP Purchase Tracking Form documented in the ASP procurement file.* ## Source metadata - **Publisher:** Arkansas General Assembly (arkleg.state.ar.us) - **URL:** https://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Home/FTPDocument?path=/ACTS/2017R/Public/ACT710.pdf - **Archived:** 2026-06-05 via PowerShell Invoke-WebRequest + dump_pdf.py text extraction - **Wayback snapshot:** save pending; retry queued - **Original PDF:** 5 pages, 187,608 bytes, sha256 b18c3a54c6ae4a3d6e4e17ac07cbc388a6c4e2515d25c658383b11259694c972 ## Bill / Act identity | Field | Value | |---|---| | Bill number | SB 513 | | Act number | **Act 710 of 2017** | | Session | 91st General Assembly — 2017 Regular Session | | Senate sponsor | Senator Bart Hester (R, SD-001) | | House sponsor | Representative Jim Dotson | | Title | An Act To Prohibit Public Entities From Contracting With And Investing In Companies That Boycott Israel; And For Other Purposes. | | Filed (Senate) | 2017-02-28 | | Senate Third Reading | 2017-03-13, passed 29-0 (2 NV, 1 absent) | | House Third Reading | 2017-03-22, passed 69-3 | | Delivered to Governor | 2017-03-23 | | Approved (Governor Asa Hutchinson) | 2017-03-27 | | Effective date | 2017-08-01 (no emergency clause; standard 91-day-post-session effective date) | | Codification | A.C.A. Title 25, Chapter 1, **Subchapter 5** (Prohibited Contracts and Investments), §§ 25-1-501 through 25-1-504 | ## Operative provisions — verbatim from enrolled Act ### § 25-1-501 — Legislative findings The Act opens with six legislative findings (Tier-2 verbatim, partial): > *"(1) Boycotts and related tactics have become a tool of economic warfare that threaten the sovereignty and security of key allies and trade partners of the United States;"* > *"(2) The State of Israel is the most prominent target of such boycott activity, which began with but has not been limited to the Arab League Boycott adopted in 1945, even before Israel's declaration of independence as the reestablished national state of the Jewish people;"* > *"(4) It is the public policy of the United States, as enshrined in several federal acts, to oppose boycotts against Israel, and Congress has concluded as a matter of national trade policy that cooperation with Israel materially benefits United States companies and improves American competitiveness;"* > *"(6) Arkansas seeks to act to implement Congress's announced policy of 'examining a company's promotion or compliance with unsanctioned boycotts, divestment from, or sanctions against Israel as part of its consideration in awarding grants and contracts and supports the divestment of state assets from companies that support or promote actions to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel'."* ### § 25-1-502 — Definitions (verbatim, key definitions) > *"(1)(A)(i) 'Boycott Israel' and 'boycott of Israel' means engaging in refusals to deal, terminating business activities, or other actions that are intended to limit commercial relations with Israel, or persons or entities doing business in Israel or in Israeli-controlled territories, in a discriminatory manner."* > *"(ii) 'Boycott' does not include those boycotts to which 50 App. U.S.C. § 2407(c) applies."* > *"(5) 'Public entity' means the State of Arkansas, or a political subdivision of the state, including all boards, commissions, agencies, institutions, authorities, and bodies politic and corporate of the state, created by or in accordance with state law or regulations, and does include colleges, universities, a statewide public employee retirement system, and institutions in Arkansas as well as units of local and municipal government;"* ### § 25-1-503 — Prohibition on contracting (the operative contract-certification provision) > *"(a) Except as provided under subsection (b) of this section, a public entity shall not:* > *(1) Enter into a contract with a company to acquire or dispose of services, supplies, information technology, or construction unless the contract includes a written certification that the person or company is not currently engaged in, and agrees for the duration of the contract not to engage in, a boycott of Israel; or* > *(2) Engage in boycotts of Israel."* > *"(b) This section does not apply to:* > *(1) A company that fails to meet the requirements under subdivision (a)(1) of this section but offers to provide the goods or services for at least twenty percent (20%) less than the lowest certifying business; or* > *(2) Contracts with a total potential value of less than one thousand dollars ($1,000)."* ### § 25-1-504 — Prohibition on direct investments (the divestment provision) The statute also requires public entities (including the statewide public-employee retirement system) to maintain a "list of restricted companies" identifying companies that boycott Israel; to send written notices to listed companies; to divest direct holdings within 3 months of restricted-company designation; and to instruct investment advisors to apply the divestment procedure (Tier-2 — text in Sections (a)–(e), pp. 4–5 of the enrolled Act). ## Notes - **Tier: 2** — official Arkansas-General-Assembly-published enrolled Act, served from the Arkansas legislature's own arkleg.state.ar.us domain. - **The "Israel $1k" line on the ASP Purchase Tracking Form** (documented in [[PO 4502265167 and Invoice 55924ELSAG — Additional ELSAG Cameras]]) is the Fiscal-Section procurement clerk's flag of whether § 25-1-503(b)(2)'s $1,000 threshold is triggered. Contracts under $1,000 are exempt; contracts ≥ $1,000 require either a vendor anti-boycott certification or the vendor providing goods/services at least 20% below the lowest certifying competitor. Leonardo's Italian parentage makes the BDS-certification question non-trivial — though no information in the ASP batch-1 production directly documents what certification Leonardo provided. - **House sponsor "Jim Dotson" supplements the Legiscan record** (which lists only Sen. Bart Hester). The enrolled Act's preamble names both: "By: Senator Hester / By: Representative Dotson". Cross-corpus context: Dotson (R-Bentonville) has authored multiple Arkansas measures touching foreign-policy + state-procurement intersections. - **Approved 03/27/2017 per the enrolled Act**, but the Legiscan status_date is 03/29/2017. The discrepancy is most-likely the gap between the Governor's signing (03/27) and the General Assembly's notification-of-Act-number publication (03/29). - **No emergency clause** — the Act's effective date is the standard 91-day-post-session date: August 1, 2017 (since the 2017 Regular Session ended early May 2017, ~91 days later is approximately August 1). - **Litigation history** is documented Tier-3 elsewhere — *Arkansas Times LP v. Waldrip / Arkansas Times LP v. Beebe* (ACLU plaintiffs' suit, Dec 2018) → district court dismissal (Jan 2019) → 8th Circuit panel reversal (Feb 2021) → 8th Circuit en banc rehearing (June 2021) → 8th Circuit en banc upheld the law (June 22, 2022) → SCOTUS denied cert (Feb 21, 2023). The corpus does not need to evaluate the constitutional question; the statute remains in force.