A Davidson County judge rejected one of the Tennessee Highway Patrol's reasons for withholding records about a series of immigration stops in Nashville in May, but said another hearing would be held to determine how an exemption on personal information might apply to withholding information about trooper's identies.
A Nashville judge said the expenses related to harassment of a 19-year-old legislative intern by then-state lawmaker Scotty Campbell are exempt from the public records law based on a House rule and a policy on workplace harassment. But Chancellor Russell Perkins refused to buy the state's broad argument that the General Assembly is exempt from the public records law.
A judge ruled that the Tennessee Republican Party's executive committee violated open meetings law when it met and decided to remove Robby Starbuck from the ballot. Starbuck wants to run in the newly redrawn 5th Congressional District race.
NewsChannel 5 has filed a public records lawsuit after it was denied access to travel reimbursement and phone records related to former acting TBI director Jason Locke's alleged affair with another state official. Jason Locke, former acting director of the TBI. A public records request for his travel reimbursements was denied on the basis that Locke was under criminal investigation. Locke is being investigated for misuse of state funds during an affair with another state official. The Nashville news station's chief investigative reporter Phil Williams also was denied access to email communications between Locke and the official, Sejal West, who was the deputy commission of the Tennessee Department of [...]
Davidson County Chancellor Russell T. Perkins ruled Wednesday that some records in the police file in the Vanderbilt rape case are subject to the Tennessee Public Records Act, including text messages and emails recovered from witnesses or criminal defendants. The ruling rejected an adoption of a law enforcement privilege for pending criminal cases, and said in a footnote that "The Court concludes these text messages are not witness statements that can be shielded from disclosure. Instead, these text messages are memorializations of conduct related to the alleged crime and the alleged cover up." Excerpt: "Taking a case-by-case view as a trial court, the Court concludes that exempting all the records [...]
