Lawyer Jack Wagoner, who helped legalize same-sex marriage in Arkansas, has died

Little Rock lawyer Jack Wagoner III died Tuesday, according to a post on his law firm’s Facebook page. He was 62.

Wagnoner was recognized in Arkansas authorized circles as among the best home relations attorneys within the state. Different Arkansans usually tend to keep in mind him as one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys within the case that first legalized same-sex marriage in the state in 2014.

Wagoner’s plaintiffs gained in circuit courtroom, however the case was appealed to the state Supreme Courtroom and stalled there till 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Courtroom determination in Obergefell v. Hodges declared same-sex marriage authorized in all places within the nation. Leslie Peacock’s 2013 Arkansas Times cover story on the homosexual and lesbian {couples} who challenged Arkansas’s ban on same-sex marriage, represented by Wagoner and lawyer Cheryl Maples, is price revisiting.

Wagoner was born in Little Rock in 1961 to Lorraine and Jack Wagoner, Jr. He graduated from Corridor Excessive Faculty in 1979 and enrolled on the College of Arkansas – Little Rock. In 1983, Wagoner determined to go to legislation faculty and started courses at what was then recognized merely because the College of Arkansas – Little Rock Faculty of Legislation. 

He excelled in legislation faculty and will have taken his profession in no matter course he wished. In a 2014 Arkansas Times profile of Wagoner, David Koon described how a want to assist the much less highly effective was finally what charted Wagoner’s course. 

Wagoner labored for Invoice Wilson, who would go on to the federal bench, throughout legislation faculty and served as a clerk for Pulaski Circuit Choose Ellen Brantley after he graduated within the high 5 % of his legislation faculty class. That efficiency might have simply landed him a job with an organization or an enormous agency, Wagoner stated, however that simply isn’t his factor. “That’s the place many of the stuff that pisses me off happens,” he stated. “I didn’t need that.”

 

It was from Wilson, Wagoner stated, that he discovered the fervour of combating for these with out energy. “He wished to battle for the little man in opposition to the insurance coverage corporations and the cops,” Wagoner stated. “I don’t like calling it the Democratic aspect or the progressive aspect. I prefer to name it ‘The Facet of the Little Man.’”

Wagoner is survived by his spouse, Joyce, and two daughters. No particulars have been launched concerning funeral preparations.

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