Jimm Larry Hendren

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Jimm Larry Hendren is the US District Judge who ruled in favor of Billy Ray and Mary Nell Counts, a couple in Cedarville, Arkansas, in the 2003 lawsuit Counts et ux. v. Cedarville School Board. The court decided that the local school's rule requiring parents' written consent to read the Harry Potter books was unconstitutional.^[1] The district court's opinion can be found here, and the decision was cited as precedent in subsequent censorship cases.^[2]

Hendren was born 1940 in Gravette, Arkansas. He graduated with a LL.B. from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1965. Later that year Hendren would join the JAG Corps of the US Navy, returning in 1968, for a year, to his private practice in Bentonville, Arkansas, which he would expand in later years. In 1970 Hendren became a US Naval Reserve Lieutenant Commander, a position he would hold until 1983. Meanwhile, in 1977, he became a probate judge (Chancellor) of Arkansas' Sixteenth Chancery District, before returning again to his private practice.^[3]

He was nominated by George H. W. Bush as the District Court Judge for the Western District of Arkansas on November 5, 1991, to a new seat created by 104 Statue 5089. The nomination was comfirmed by the United States Senate on March 13, 1992, and Hendren received the commission on March 18, 1992. He has served as the chief judge from 1997 to the present.^[4]