A Georgia mother whose five small children were taken from her after a traffic stop has alleged Tennessee Department of Children’s Services workers acted without a valid court order in violation of the law, new filings in a civil rights lawsuit said.

Bianca Clayborne filed suit last year on behalf of herself and her children, who were placed in foster care for 55 days following the February 2023 traffic stop in rural Tennessee.

Clayborne, her partner and their five children were on their way to a funeral in Chicago from their home in Atlanta when a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer pulled them over in Coffee County for tinted windows and a slowpoke violation, an incident report said.

Claiming to smell marijuana, troopers searched the car, finding fewer than five grams, according to the report.

Possession of small amounts of marijuana typically result in a paper citation in Tennessee. Instead, troopers arrested Clayborne’s partner, Deonte Williams, cited Clayborne and asked the mother to follow them in her car with her children to the Coffee County jail to bail Williams out. Williams admitted to the possession, but Clayborne denied she had used marijuana.

Tennessee DCS workers can be held liable for role in taking kids from parents after traffic stop

In the jailhouse parking lot, social workers confronted Clayborne in her car before forcibly taking away her children, who ranged in age at the time from a seven-year-old to a four-month-old breastfeeding baby.

The incident received widespread attention and raised questions about whether the family, who is Black, received disparate treatment because of their race. In the days after the Tennessee Lookout first reported the traffic stop, Tennessee Democrats, the Tennessee Conference of the NAACP and others demanded the children be returned home.

Williams later pled guilty to a single simple possession charge. The charge against Clayborne was dismissed.

Now the ongoing lawsuit against those who participated in the children’s removal – among them Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers, Coffee County Sheriff’s deputies, and caseworkers with the Department of Children’s Services – makes a series of new allegations that the process used to remove the children violated the law – and that DCS and Coffee County officials destroyed evidence and created a false paper trail to cover their tracks.

“These public officials illegally tore apart and terrorized Clayborne’s family,” the lawsuit said. “They acted outrageously and unlawfully. Their actions caused severe emotional trauma to Clayborne and each of her five children.”

A spokesperson with the Tennessee Attorney General’s office, which is representing Department of Children Services caseworkers and THP troopers named in the lawsuit, did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Attorneys representing Coffee County and its employees argued in legal filings that the new claims are barred by a statute of limitations. They did not respond to requests for comment by the Lookout on Wednesday.

‘Momma is not going to give them up without a fight’

Tennessee law requires that DCS workers seeking an emergency removal of children from their parents file a sworn petition in court that details evidence of children being abused or neglected. Then a juvenile judge must issue a written order before any efforts to separate children from their parents is carried out.

That didn’t happen in this case, the lawsuit alleges.

Instead, a DCS caseworker who had no first-hand contact with Clayborne or her children placed a call to Coffee County General Sessions Judge Greg Perry about the traffic stop — a call that was outside the formal legal process.

A Black family fights to get their kids back from Tennessee Department of Children’s Services

Coffee County officials separately contacted Perry to question whether they could legally separate Clayborne from her children.

At the time, Clayborne was parked in the Coffee County jail parking lot, where county sheriff deputies had placed spike strips around her car to prevent her from leaving – an illegal exercise of police power to detain an individual who was otherwise not under arrest, not subject to any court order and free to leave with her children, the lawsuit said.

“Well momma is not going to give them up without a fight,” Coffee County Sheriff Investigator James Sherrill told Judge Perry, according to a recording of the call obtained from the county by Clayborne’s attorneys.

“If we get in the middle of this, there’s going to be a damn lawsuit,” Sherrill said.

In response, Perry said officers could arrest Clayborne for disorderly conduct. And, the judge said, “you won’t get in a lawsuit…because I’ve got judicial immunity.”

Perry told Coffee County officials his verbal order to remove the children was enough.

Tennessee law does not recognize oral orders from judges to remove children from a parent’s custody, the lawsuit noted.

“Tennessee does not permit children to be taken from their parents based on a private telephone call to a judge,” legal filings said.

If we get in the middle of this, there’s going to be a damn lawsuit.

– Coffee County Sheriff Investigator James Sherrill

“Instead, when DCS believes a child should be removed from their home, DCS must file a proper petition and make factual allegations under oath to support the drastic relief of removing a child from their family — and the law requires that the removal can only happen after procuring a valid court order.”

Perry is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, which nevertheless alleges he acted with “no lawful authority.”

Perry did not return a message left with his office seeking comment about the allegations.

Lawsuit alleges DCS effort to “paper over” the record

The children were taken from Clayborne’s side as she waited to bail Williams out of the county jail about six hours after the traffic stop.

It was sometime after the children were taken into state custody that a DCS attorney filed the necessary legal paperwork. The time stamp on the petition was obscured, a further step to hide that legal paperwork had been filed after the children had already been taken from their mother in violation of state law, the legal filings said.

“Presumably aware they had not followed any legal ‘process,’ the DCS Defendants immediately began to paper over the record to make it look like they had followed the law — when in fact they had not,” the suit said.

The same DCS attorney continued to communicate with the judge one-on-one about the case, despite standard court rules that bar communications about an active case that do not include all parties.

Mother of five kids taken by DCS after traffic stop files lawsuit

Weeks later, after the family’s then-attorney learned about the private communications between DCS and Perry, the DCS attorney and the judge engaged in a series of late-night texts after 11 p.m. to discuss how to avert a lawsuit, legal filings said.

The attorney, who is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, was terminated by DCS in 2024 for her conduct in a separate case that involved helping a DCS caseworker submit a “sworn petition falsely alleging that a child was drug-exposed to justify” removal of that child, the filing said.

U.S. District Judge Clifton Corker has yet to rule on whether the new claims filed by Clayborne’s attorneys may go forward.

Corker ruled in August that DCS caseworkers can be held liable for their conduct in the case, including for claims they violated the family’s Fourth Amendment Constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizures and the family’s legal claims of false arrest and false imprisonment.

The new filings also seek to add additional DCS caseworkers and Coffee County officers involved in the incident whose identities were only made known to the family after the initial lawsuit was filed.

The family is represented by prominent Nashville civil rights attorneys Abby Rubenfeld, Tricia Herzfeld and Anthony Orlandi.

The fate of more than 2,000 refugees expected in Tennessee over the coming months remains in limbo after President Donald Trump halted resettlement and support efforts beginning on his first day in office.

The Tennessee Office of Refugees, a department of Catholic Charities, works with a handful of nonprofit agencies to help refugees displaced by natural and humanitarian disasters get a fresh start in the Volunteer State.

Between Sept. 2024 and Sept. 2025, the office expected to welcome 2,385 newly-arriving refugees, according to Rick Mussachio, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Nashville. Refugees represent a small portion of legal immigrants admitted to the country. They are fully vetted by federal authorities before being approved for resettlement.

But the president’s order has frozen transport of all U.S.-bound refugees. And a subsequent January 24 “stop work” letter was sent to refugee resettlement agencies across the country to halt so-called “reception and placement” services. These temporary services include small stipends — about $1,300 per month — to help refugee families pay for basic necessities in their first three months in the country and provide staff support to help them get oriented.

More than 140 refugees who arrived in Tennessee since September are impacted by the halt of reception and replacement services, according to data provided by the Tennessee Office of Refugees. These refugees hailed from nearly a dozen countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cuba, Haiti, Burma, Sudan, Venezuela, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

“It’s had a huge impact,” Mussachio said. “People with travel documents were stopped wherever they were. And recent arrivals need the support through this program. It’s a vital stepping stone to build roots and establish life in communities.”

Mussachio noted that Catholic Charities has some limited reserves to draw on temporarily, but a long term stoppage puts ongoing refugee services at risk. Catholic Charities on Friday laid off 11 refugee program staff members and the jobs of 60 more are at risk, he said. The agency has issued an urgent call for volunteers to assist during the federal funding stoppage.

The Trump administration has offered no certain timelines on when the halt on refugee arrivals is lifted. Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order said it would continue “until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.”

Staff at the Nashville International Center for Empowerment, or NICE, had been preparing for at least 64 overseas arrivals in February, said Max Rykov, director of development and communications.

Those individuals’ plane tickets have been cancelled. Many of those slated to arrive in Tennessee have family members who have been waiting for them, sometimes for long periods. Rykov called the cancellations “heartbreaking.”

“The people we resettle are oftentimes coming from dangerous or perilous circumstances,” he said. “A lot of people in Nashville have been waiting for years for their family members to arrive.”

Nashville has long been a vital hub for refugee resettling in the United States from around the globe. A long tradition of refugee-serving agencies has given rise to Kurdish, Vietnamese, Somali and other local communities. Refugee resettlement agencies working with the Tennessee Office of Refugee Resettlement help new arrivals get a start in Memphis, Chattanooga and Knoxville.

Dan Curran, a spokesperson for Nashville-based Inspiritus, said the agency was expecting about 100 refugees in February. What will ultimately happen to them is unknown, he said.

Refugees represent one small portion of the legal immigration population, Curran noted. They go through a vetting process by federal authorities that can take up to two years.

Marina Peshterianu, associate director of Bridge Refugee Services in Chattanooga said her agency, with the help of local churches and other volunteers, would “continue to serve our clients.”

“I don’t want to plant fear or panic right now,” she said. “I think we all hope that a reasonable solution is there. We’re just waiting for it to come.”

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.

As Gov. Bill Lee’s immigration enforcement plan moves swiftly through the Tennessee Legislature, one component of the bill — aimed at arresting local officials who support sanctuary policies for immigrants — drew scrutiny Tuesday.

Included in the governor’s wide-ranging proposal to coordinate with the Trump Administration on mass immigrant detentions and deportations is a provision that creates a Class E felony for public officials who vote to adopt or enact sanctuary policies. Sanctuary policies can shield undocumented immigrants and limit cooperation with enforcement action

The felony charge, punishable by up to six years in prison and a $3,000 fine, would apply to any public official who votes in favor of a sanctuary law, policy or on non-binding resolutions.

Sen. Todd Gardenhire, the Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted the provision Tuesday as a “dangerous precedent.”

“We are a Republic, and a Republic is one that we elect people to vote the way they feel like is best for the district, the city, county or the state,” he said.

“If we set the precedent of penalizing any elected official for voting their conscience, whether it’s good or bad, then we set a dangerous precedent for the future,” he said.

Under Trump, immigration arrests at school could be a step too far for some Tennessee conservatives

Democrats characterized the provision as a “slippery slope” that could be invoked in future legislation to criminalize votes on any controversial issue.

“It is alarming we are sitting here talking about felonizing elected officials taking votes on behalf of their constituency,” Sen. Heidi Campbell, a Nashville Democrat, said. “Boy, this is a slippery slope and be careful what you wish for if you vote for this.”

Gardenhire was in the minority among Republicans who dominate the Senate Judiciary Committee. They quickly shot down Gardenhire’s efforts to amend the bill to remove criminal penalties before voting to advance it in the legislature.

Sanctuary policies are already prohibited by a 2019 Tennessee law that sought to prevent local governments from adopting sanctuary city status —as some other Democrat-led cities across the country have done.

The 2019 Tennessee law gives citizens the right to file civil suits challenging any jurisdiction’s adoption of sanctuary policies and the state the power to withhold funding over violations.

“When the state banned sanctuary cities, its remedies were to deny cities grants and to seek a court order,” said Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.

“Here the state is trying to control the actions of duly-elected officials through the police power,” he said. “That’s a dramatic escalation.”

One national government accountability expert said he knew of no other state law that threatened to prosecute public officials for how they cast a vote.

“It’s an unprecedented power grab and criminalization of political discourse,” said Dan Vicuña, director of redistricting and representation for Common Cause, a Washington, D.C. advocacy group.

“It puts at risk the basic right to local representative and democratic government,” he said.

And local legal experts, among them the legislature’s own attorney, said the provision may be “constitutionally suspect.”

“Generally speaking Tennessee courts have found legislative bodies have legislative immunity for acts that serve part of their legislative function and that legislative immunity extends to local legislative bodies,” Elizabeth Insogna, a Legislative attorney, told the committee.

‘Be prepared’ Nashville leaders caution immigrant communities about looming crackdowns

“It’s possible that a criminal provision that is enforced against a member of a legislative body may be constitutionally suspect,” she said. “It would be up for a court to determine.”

John Vile, professor of political science and Dean of the University Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University said “legislators should heed Article 1” of the Tennessee Constitution, which establishes a “Declaration of Rights” for citizens and their elected representatives.

“I don’t know of any other laws, state or federal, that penalize elected officials on the basis of how they vote,” he said. “This seems to defeat the whole purpose of democratic-republican (representative) government.

Republicans however noted the criminal penalties are aimed at elected officials attempting to pass legislation already outlawed in Tennessee.

“I think everybody would agree that’s something that elected officials should be prohibited from doing, or should not do,” said Sen. Kerry Roberts, a Springfield Republican. “The fact there’s a consequence for it, I personally don’t have a problem with that, because they ought not to be doing it in the first place. It’s illegal.”

Only two current laws provide criminal penalties for lawmakers acting in their official capacities, according to Stephen Crump, executive director of the Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference. One longstanding law allows criminal charges to be brought against county commissioners who fail to adequately fund local jails. Other lawmakers may be charged if their vote violates official misconduct statutes.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.

Gov. Bill Lee’s plan to use state resources for immigration enforcement will cost Tennessee taxpayers $20.5 million annually, an analysis from the state’s fiscal review committee found.

The price tag includes more than $560,000 to establish and run a four-person “centralized immigration enforcement division” that would serve as liaison with the U.S. government to enforce immigration laws.

A grant program to provide funds to local law enforcement agencies that enter into so-called 287(g) agreements with the federal government to enforce immigration laws would cost $20 million annually, the analysis found.

‘Tennessee is heeding the call’: Lee presses forward on immigration agenda in special session

Lee, earlier this month, made the surprise announcement that immigration enforcement legislation would be considered as part of a special session of the Tennessee legislature that convened Monday. The session will also consider Lee’s controversial private school voucher plans and disaster recovery funds for northeast Tennessee counties struck by the inland force of Hurricane Helene.

Immigration enforcement has long been a federal responsibility, paid for by federal funds. Lee’s proposal, if approved by the Legislature, would be the first substantial use of Tennessee taxpayer dollars to enforce U.S. immigration law within the state.

Lee’s proposal – a broad package that also includes criminal penalties for local officials who vote in favor of sanctuary policies for immigrants and adding distinctive markings to state licenses and IDs issued to legal immigrants – has drawn pushback from Democrats who characterized it as a political ploy to distract from Lee’s school voucher plan.

Immigrant advocates have called Lee’s plan “extreme” and said it appears to go further in asserting state power over immigration enforcement than any other non-border state.

Lee has said the proposal is to ensure “our state is ready to assist President Trump in carrying out his immigration enforcement agenda.”

The Legislature is expected to debate the bill this week.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.

Rutherford County school librarians’ phones started buzzing with traded messages of fear and frustration as soon as the central office email directive arrived on an otherwise routine Tuesday morning:

150 book titles had to be removed from the shelves – or tracked down and taken from kids who had borrowed them.

Immediately.

“Librarians had to drop everything they were doing: no more checking books in and out, no answering questions or assisting with research, not able to do the jobs they love to do. Some even had to shut down their library for the day,” said Elizabeth Shepherd, librarian at the Discovery School in Murfreesboro who described the frantic text message exchanges among fellow librarians that ensued.

“Instead, they had to make their first priority book removal, not just taking them off the shelves but also taking them out of the hands of students, a process that is literally heartbreaking as a librarian.”

The books were removed without formal review by school board members, librarians, teachers or parents less than 24 hours after an emailed request to Rutherford County Director of Schools James Sullivan from a school board member.

“Per state law, here is a list of 150 books that have been challenged for sexually explicit content,” read the Nov. 11 email from board member Francis Rosales. “Please review the attached documents for violations related to sexually explicit material in school libraries,” the email said.

Rosales cited newly enacted Tennessee legislation that bars books that contain nudity and descriptions of “sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence or sadomasochistic abuse” and attached “pages of concern” for each title.

“It was partly because of accusations that we were having those types of books in our school libraries, so I took it upon myself to do this,” Rosales told the Lookout on Thursday. “My goal is if we are accused of having these books we should tackle this now.”

But the speed with which the school district pulled books that include American classics such as “A Clockwork Orange’’ and “Catch-22,” along with LGBTQ-theme titles including, “Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens,” created a firestorm that spilled into public view at a Nov. 14 board meeting.

School board member Katie Darby accused Rosales of including books to be banned that “have no business being on there” and “wasting people’s time.” Rosales questioned whether Darby supported having sexually explicit materials available to children. The board chair gavelled to a close the testy exchange that followed.

Law source of ‘chaos and confusion’

Tennessee’s newly enacted school library statute, in effect since July 1, expands upon a 2022 law requiring school libraries to regularly review book collections to ensure only age-appropriate reading materials are available to students.

The new law, which received unanimous support from Tennessee Republican lawmakers, further defined objectionable books as those containing sexually explicit passages, nudity and excess violence but failed to define what those terms mean.

The vagueness of the law’s language has drawn sharp criticism from educators and civil liberties advocates who warn the legislation could be interpreted to encompass a vast range of children and young adult books.

“Public Chapter 782 is the source of this chaos and confusion for school librarians in Tennessee, as it creates a way for unchallenged books to be removed from the shelves, does not take into account the age or maturity level of the student, and it encourages self-censorship,” the Tennessee Association of School Librarians said in a statement.

The association said the law has put educators in the position of deciding on whether books meet new “legal standards that have not been adequately explained by the State of Tennessee in the form of guidance.”

As a result, public school officials have requested an attorney general’s opinion to help them comply with the law. Districts, including Rutherford County, have deferred decisions on how to create new guidelines to review challenged books until they receive that decision. A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office declined to comment on the status of any opinion Friday.

Conservative website cited in state book bans

In the meantime, some school districts have begun to proactively remove books that could violate the new law, relying largely on a single website created by a Florida resident and former member of the conservative parents’ rights group, Moms for Liberty, that rates books on their sexual content, violence and explicit language.

Last month, Wilson County, Tennessee removed about 400 books from its public school libraries relying on book reviews by the website, BookLooks.org. Among the removed titles are those by the authors Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut and Dr. Seuss.

Williamson School Board member balks at “age appropriate” book law

School officials in Wilson County then shared their list of banned books with educators in Clarksville-Montgomery County School System (CMCSS), prompting pushback by some local parents and educators against removing books.

CMCSS officials later clarified the list is being used as a “resource” as the system weighs which books may be banned.

Rosales told the Lookout she had also relied on the Wilson County book list and Booklook.org for help in compiling her list of 150 questionable books.

Rosales compared the 400 books Wilson County educators have pulled from library shelves to book ratings by BookLooks.org, she said. She then compared books the website rated poorly for explicit content, expletives and violence to books available in Rutherford County school libraries to arrive at her list, she said.

BookLooks.org has been the source for multiple book bans across the nation, according to Tasslin Magnusson, senior adviser to the Freedom To Read Team at Pen America, a First Amendment advocacy group, which has tracked more than 10,000 book bans in public schools in the 2023-2024 school year.

“It’s a dirty look at the books,” Magnusson said. “Even the scenes they quote are often out of context. They don’t evaluate books as a whole or work under any guiding principles.”

In Rutherford County, librarians are currently reviewing each of the 150 books being challenged, according to a district spokesperson.

Librarians will compare book content to the language of the state law to make recommendations on which books should be permanently removed by the end of the year, the spokesperson said. The district has authorized $1,000 in compensation to librarians conducting the reviews.

The school board will then vote on retaining or removing individual books. Until those votes are cast, the books will remain unavailable to students.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and X.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Accusing Johnson City officials of victim-shaming, a group of women suing the city and multiple police officers over shoddy or corrupt investigations pushed back against public statements suggesting they deserve blame for being victims of an alleged serial rapist.

“My name is Anya and I am here today because a predator was allowed to take advantage of people in vulnerable situations far longer than should ever have happened,” said one of eight women who gathered in a Knoxville hotel meeting room to speak publicly about the case for the first time.

“I was certainly not at fault. People were scared to report to police because they had heard police were doing nothing, or worse,” she said.

The women, referred to as “Jane Does” in the lawsuit, agreed to be photographed but not identified by their full names at a news conference on Tuesday organized by their attorneys, where they took turns responding to remarks made about the case by Johnson City Manager Cathy Ball.

Ball has said the victims could be, to some degree, “at fault” for their assaults because they “consumed and partook of illegal drugs.”

The women’s lawsuit, first filed last June, centers on allegations that Johnson City police knew of multiple allegations that local businessman Sean Williams drugged then sexually assaulted women — but failed to act, even after police discovered a handwritten list on Williams’ nightstand scrawled with the first names of 23 women, under the word “raped.”

Williams was arrested in North Carolina last April, where he fled to escape illegal weapons charges in Johnson City. After his arrest, local police discovered images and videos on his electronic devices of 52 women, who appeared to be drugged while being sexually assaulted inside Williams’ downtown Johnson City condo. The devices also contained images of two children being assaulted, court records said.

“I am one of the 52 women whom Sean Williams sexually assaulted while taking sexually explicit photos of me,” one of the Jane Does said Tuesday. “My name also appears on the ‘raped’ list, which the Johnson City Police Department recovered Sean Williams apartment…The people in my community who are supposed to protect me and the other women you see here today failed us.”

One woman spoke of being offered only a beer before her assault, but learned afterwards she had unknowingly been slipped benzodiazepines; another spoke of struggling with addiction at the time of her assault. “That should not matter,” one Jane Doe said firmly. “That does not mean it’s all right for them to be raped or that they deserve zero empathy or no accountability.”

“Survivors deserve to be treated with respect,” another Jane Doe said. “For a woman in Cathy Ball’s position of power to say publicly that victims are at fault when we didn’t have the ability to defend ourselves…it was a punch in the gut.”

Vanessa Baeher-Jones, an attorney with California-based Advocates for Survivors of Abuse who is representing the women, called Ball’s statements an effort to “turn the focus of this case away from Sean Williams, a serial rapist, and the Johnson City Police Department’s corruption and instead to publicly shame the survivors of his crimes.”

Ball said Wednesday that city officials are “committed to transparency and want our community members to have access to all the facts.”

“Protecting victims and the community is the top priority of the Johnson City Police Department,” a statement from Ball said. Ball also encouraged victims to report crimes to law enforcement.

Lawyers for the women are now seeking class action status for the lawsuit, to include not only Williams’ victims but all sexual assault victims whose cases were mishandled by Johnson City police. The original lawsuit, first representing nine women who said they were assaulted by Sean Williams, expanded to a tenth plaintiff who said she was assaulted as a teen by another assailant, but Johnson City Police similarly failed to investigate her case.

Attorneys for the women — who also include Brentwood based attorney Heather Moore Collins with HMC Civil Rights Law and San Francisco attorney Elizabeth Kramer — have now alleged a broader corruption scheme involving kickbacks from Williams to police officers and intimidation of witnesses, including a woman who spoke to the FBI in 2022 about being raped by Williams

Months later, she was assaulted and arrested by Johnson City Police officers, who planted a small bag of cocaine in her backpack, court filings allege. The woman was then evicted by Johnson City Housing Authority, an action that the lawsuit alleges was part of an orchestrated campaign by Johnson City Police to retaliate against and intimidate the woman.

A separate lawsuit brought by former Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Kateri Dahl alleges the Johnson City Police Department, either incompetently or corruptly, failed to take a serial rapist off the streets, then ended her contract as police-federal prosecutor liaison as she pursued the case. That case remains ongoing.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.

A lingering legal battle that was poised to settle this summer, leading to a clearer pathway for tens of thousands of Tennesseans to restore their voting rights, has instead reignited into a contentious court fight with no certain outcome ahead of the next presidential election.

One in five Black voting-age Tennesseans lacks the right to vote due to a past criminal conviction — likely the highest rate of African-American disenfranchisement in the nation, according to the Sentencing Project. Overall, nearly 10% of the Tennessee electorate — 470,000 people — have lost their right to vote due to convictions.

In a lawsuit filed in December 2020, the Tennessee Conference of the NAACP and five residents denied the right to vote alleged Tennessee officials failed to follow state laws that allow individuals to legally restore their voting rights after serving their sentences and completing parole. Instead, the state implemented inaccessible and opaque processes that impede legal pathways for restoring rights, the lawsuit claimed.

Close to settling key claims in the case over the summer — potentially ahead of high profile local elections in Nashville, Memphis and for state office — attorneys for the state abruptly broke off talks in late July, catching lawyers for the NAACP by surprise, legal filings show. Then, on August 2, lawyers for the Tennessee Attorney General filed motions asking a judge to reject the claims entirely.

Tennessee Supreme Court rules in felony voting rights case

“The Elections Division, TDOC, and Governor’s office had the opportunity this summer to create accessible, transparent, and uniform procedures to allow the over 470,000 disenfranchised Tennesseans a fair shot at getting their voting rights restored and rejoining their communities as full citizens,” Blair Bowie, an attorney representing the NAACP with the DC-based Campaign Legal Center, said Friday.

“Instead, they blew up the voting rights restoration system entirely and imposed effectively permanent disenfranchisement on July 21,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Tennessee Attorney General did not respond to emailed questions on Friday.

The breakdown in the federal case came shortly after a June 29 ruling by the Tennessee Supreme Court against Ernest Falls, who was denied the right to vote in Tennessee in 2020 after receiving clemency in Virginia for a decades-old crime.

The Supreme Court ruled that Falls, also represented by the Campaign Legal Center, was required to show he had paid all outstanding court costs, restitution and child support obligations in Virginia to establish his voting rights — in addition to proof of the Virginia clemency.

Secretary of State Mark Goins then issued a memo that incorporated expanded requirements for all state residents seeking to restore their voting rights — regardless of where their conviction took place. In addition to the process of demonstrating they, too, had paid court costs and other financial obligations related to their crime, in-state residents must now show they also “have been pardoned by a Governor, U.S. President, or other appropriate authority of a state or have had their full rights of citizenship restored as prescribed by law.”

The memo wasn’t shared with attorneys for the NAACP who had been involved with them in settlement negotiations for months, legal filings said.

“Plaintiffs learned from public reporting that Defendant Goins had that day issued guidance to county election officials changing his interpretation of the State’s requirements for individuals with felony convictions to restore their voting rights,” court records said.

In seeking a ruling dismissing major elements of the case, state lawyers have argued in motions for summary judgement that the five individuals names in the suit lack standing in court.

Tennessee does have a process in place for restoration of rights, one that provides a pathway to restoring rights while preserving election integrity, they argued.

“Tennessee does not reject all voter registration forms on which the applicant affirmed that they have a felony conviction,” the state’s filings said. “Moreover, Tennessee’s practice is rationally related to its legitimate interest in combatting voter fraud, safeguarding voter confidence, and ensuring accurate record keeping.”

The Sentencing Project’s national voting rights study found that that 3,415 Tennessee voting-age citizens have been granted Certificates of Restoration since 2016 — fewer than 1% of those with prior felony convictions estimated to be eligible to vote under Tennessee law.

The NAACP lawsuit argues that the current administration of voting right restoration certificates violate the U.S. Constitution’s due process and the equal protection rights.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.