George Pritchett, Russell Skallerup, and Bruce Mitchell, Appellants v. City of Hot Springs, Arkansas, Appellee

Summary

The court affirmed summary judgment for the City, holding that the annexation statute did not violate property owners' constitutional rights and that the disputed tracts fell within the statute's plain meaning. It held that annexation does not implicate a fundamental right to vote, so rational-basis review applied, and construed "includes" as introducing a nonexclusive example of land that may be annexed when completely surrounded by a municipality. Justice Josephine Linker Hart, dissenting, would have applied heightened equal-protection scrutiny and interpreted the statute to prohibit the annexation.