Leslie Rutledge

Rutledge defended Arkansas House Bill 1570, a law enacted by the Arkansas Legislature in 2021 that banned gender-affirming care for minors.

The law was enacted in 2021 amid an anti-transgender movement; in the subsequent court challenge, Rutledge defended the law.

She was interviewed on The Problem with Jon Stewart about the law, which was blocked by the federal courts.

Leslie Carol Rutledge (born June 9, 1976) is an American attorney and politician who has served as the 21st lieutenant governor of Arkansas since 2023.

Rutledge was hired as an attorney for the Division of Children and Family Services within the Arkansas Department of Human Services (DHS) in October 2006, and resigned with immediate effect on December 3, 2007.

Rutledge was a lawyer for Huckabee's unsuccessful 2008 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, and campaigned for him in Iowa ahead of the caucus there.

Rutledge served as counsel for Governor Mike Huckabee before she was elected to be Arkansas attorney general in 2014.

A partial set of personnel records obtained by the press in 2014 under Arkansas' freedom of information law showed that Rutledge was flagged by DHS with "do not rehire" status.

Rutledge said that she resigned to work for Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign, suggested the "do not hire" status was not related to any incident at work, and suggested that the notation, "My guess is that it was because I did not give a two weeks notice."

Rutledge sought the Republican nomination for Attorney General of Arkansas in the 2014 election.

She faced fellow attorneys Patricia Nation and David Sterling.

Rutledge finished with a plurality in the May 2014 primary but finished with less than 50 percent of the vote.

She hence faced second-place finisher Sterling (the former city manager of Hope) in a runoff election.

Nation endorsed Rutledge, and she defeated Sterling.

In September 2014, Pulaski County Clerk Larry Crane canceled Rutledge's voter registration when he discovered that Rutledge had registered to vote in Washington, D.C., and Virginia.

Rutledge protested (saying that the cancellation of her registration "was improper, invalid and illegal") but nevertheless re-registered to vote in Pulaski County.

In the November 2014 general election, Rutledge defeated Democratic Party nominee Nate Steel, a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives, and Libertarian Party nominee Aaron Cash, in the general election.

Rutledge won 51.61% of the vote, Steel 43.21%, and Cash 5.18%.

A member of the Republican Party, she was previously the 56th attorney general of Arkansas from 2015 to 2023.

In 2015, the state legislature passed the Intrastate Commerce Improvement Act, a law blocking local governments from passing anti-discrimination laws providing protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Several Arkansas local governments, including Fayetteville, Eureka Springs, Hot Springs, and Texarkana, passed anti-discrimination ordinances.

Rutledge defended the state's law, opposed the local governments' ordinances, and appealed a ruling by a circuit judge that the Fayetteville ordinance did not violate state law.

The Arkansas Supreme Court, in decisions in 2017 and 2018, sided with Rutledge, ruling that the local anti-discrimination ordinance was void.

In February 2021, Rutledge proposed a bill that would prohibit transgender athletes from playing on girls' sports teams in K–12 schools.

In July 2017, Rutledge joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, as well as nine other Republican state attorneys general and Republican Idaho Governor Butch Otter, in threatening the Donald Trump administration that they would litigate if the president did not terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy that had been put into place by president Barack Obama.

She was reelected as attorney general in 2018, and elected lieutenant governor in the 2022 after withdrawing from gubernatorial election and endorsing Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Rutledge was the first Republican and first woman elected attorney general for Arkansas, and is the first woman lieutenant governor of Arkansas.

Rutledge was born in Southside, Arkansas.

She graduated from Southside High School, the University of Arkansas, and the William H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Rutledge began her legal career as law clerk to the Arkansas Court of Appeals Judge Josephine Hart, a family friend.

Rutledge worked on Hart's successful campaigns for election as associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court.

Before seeking office herself, Rutledge also worked for the national Republican Party, as a lawyer for the National Republican Congressional Committee and Republican National Committee.

For a time, she was also a deputy prosecuting attorney in Lonoke County.

In 2018, an employee of the Democratic Party of Arkansas filed a FOIA lawsuit to compel the release of Rutledge's DHS personnel file; Rutledge said the lawsuit was "dragging up decade-old fake news."

The agency had initially withheld the records, but a state judge ruled that Rutledge's file must be released under the Arkansas' freedom of information law.

The remaining eight pages of Rutledge's personnel file were then released, reflecting that her DHS employment was terminated for "gross misconduct"; Rutledge said the notation was incorrect.

Other records released in 2018 included one document evaluating Rutledge's performance as "satisfactory"; one non-disciplinary "counseling statement" critiquing her handling of a case; and a "notice of disciplinary action."

In 2018, Rutledge won re-election.

She received 61.8% of the vote, defeating Democratic nominee Mike Lee (who received 35.43%) and Libertarian nominee Kerry Hicks (who received 2.77%).

Rutledge was a speaker at the 2018 CPAC in Maryland; in her speech, Rutledge introduced herself as a "Christian, pro-life, gun-carrying conservative woman" and cited the Bible as a reason to limit immigration, mentioning the construction of city walls by Nehemiah referenced in the Book of Nehemiah.