A Hendersonville resident has filed a lawsuit to force the Nashville Police Department to release the Covenant School shooter's manifesto and other writings, saying that Tennessee law does not allow police to withhold material that is not part of pending or contemplated criminal action.
A group of residents in Hickman County are suing the Water Authority of Dickson County for not turning over documents about a proposed sewage plant that would dump 12 million gallons of wastewater a day into Lick Creek. The residents allege that the water authority withheld documents without explanation. About 97% of the sewage would come from Davidson and Williamson counties.
Davidson County Chancellor Pat Moskal ruled that the state could not withhold consultant reports by McKinsey and Co. under a deliberative process privilege in the face of a public records request. She said the reports were a one-way communication with state officials and did not fall under a deliberative process privilege because they were not "deliberative" and did not consist of communications between high-level government officials. The ruling is a win for journalist Stephen Elliott, who began requesting the reports in 2020.
The Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled that an audio recording of a trial made by the court reporter is part of the court record and a public record subject to the state public records law. The ruling overturns a lower court decision that had upheld an East Tennessee judge's refusal to give a convicted killer the audio recording of his murder trial.
A lawsuit filed earlier this month by journalist Stacy Jacobson of WREG in Memphis is seeking access to records related to the Department of Children's Services interactions with a 14-year-old boy who died in Memphis 2020. The department had investigated issues surrounding the boy four times previous to his death.
