A federal judge set a December 2028 trial date for a lawsuit contesting a whites-only community in Sharp County.

Over the objections of a woman suing over being rejected and the group building and living at Return to the Land, U.S. District Judge D.P. Marshal scheduled the case for trial Dec. 11, 2028, at the federal courthouse in Jonesboro.

Marshall’s office, in a note in the court file, said the judge couldn’t accommodate a trial any sooner.

Michelle Walker, a Jewish St. Louis woman who sought the right to purchase land in the community known as Return to the Land, sued the group in May after being rejected for membership.

Walker, who is seeking a preliminary injunction stopping the group from discriminating on the basis of race and religion, sought to take the case to trial at an earlier, unspecified date.

“Ms. Walker filed suit nearly five months ago,” attorney Reid Colfax said in a motion to speed up scheduling in the case. “Defendants have continued to promote their community as limited to white, non-Jewish families and has announced additional communities.”

Jonathan Gross, an attorney for Eric Orwoll and Peter Csere, the founders of Return to the Land, said allowing the exchange of pretrial information, such as taking depositions, the subpoenaing of texts and notes to accommodate a trial date could unnecessarily expose private communications.

“None of that is necessary to litigate plaintiff’s claims against RTTL, which concern RTTL’s membership decisions,” Gross wrote.

The application for membership in Return to the Land includes questions about political philosophy, religion, ancestry and special skills. Applicants are also asked if they support same-sex marriage, transgender people, abortion, segregation and procreation. The form also asks: “How often do you think about the Roman empire?”

Walker applied in November 2025, paid a $25 application fee and answered questions about her ancestry, religious beliefs and thoughts on housing laws, segregation, multiculturalism and transgender people, according to the lawsuit.

Return to the Land doesn’t directly sell real estate to applicants.

Instead, it screens applicants for membership in the group. Another company tied to Orwoll and Csere, Wisdom Woods, sells the land to approved members of the group.

Return to the Land, which claims about 1,000 members, and Wisdom Woods, which claims roughly 40 members, exists behind a locked gate in a rural area near Ravenden in Sharp County.

One promotional video for Return to the Land references Nazi Germany leader Adolf Hitler seizing political power for an all-white nation.

“You’re going to get Hitler 2.0 when you deserve him … He’s not just going to show up to a people that aren’t putting in the work themselves,” the video states.

Similar whites-only communities have been tried in Arkansas and around the country. Neo-Nazi Billy Roper of Russellville has been pushing the concept of an all-white community called “Ozarkia” in northern Arkansas and southern Missouri.

Elohim City in Oklahoma is a private, white supremacist colony aligned with the white supremacist Christian identity movement. The town is the final resting place of Richard Wayne Snell, a white supremacist executed in Arkansas in 1995 for killing a pawn shop owner he thought was Jewish and a Black police officer in 1983 and 1984, respectively."