The Tennessee General Assembly cannot unilaterally shrink the size of Nashville’s Metro Council, a panel of judges ruled 2-1 Monday, finding a 2023 law violated a state constitutional amendment protecting local sovereignty. The state has 30 days to appeal the ruling.
The decision continues the city’s undefeated record in its fight to retain local control of Nashville after the General Assembly passed a handful of bills attempting to take over various aspects of the city’s governance in 2023.
Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.
“I’m pleased with the court’s decision to allow Nashville to have the authority to choose the size of its Metropolitan Council,” Mayor Freddie O’Connell said in a written statement. “I’m grateful to Director of Law Wally Dietz and his team for their excellent work throughout this litigation. The Metro Charter gives Nashvillians the right to determine the size of our Metro Council, and as recently as 2015, we decisively concluded we prefer 40 members.”
Associate Metro Law Director for Litigation Allison Bussell said the ruling “meaningfully preserves the will of Nashville voters.”
Madison County Judge Joseph T. Howell disagreed and wrote that because the other two metropolitan governments in Tennessee must maintain compliance with the law, it does not just apply to Nashville and therefore complies with the Home Rule Amendment.
The bills that sought to exert more control over Nashville’s affairs were seen as retaliation for the Metro Council shooting down a draft agreement to host the 2024 Republican National Convention, which effectively took the city out of the running and handed the convention to its this year’s host, Milwaukee.
The laws passed by the state — including the council size bill and ones giving the state a greater say over Nashville’s sports authority and airport authority boards and one to make it easier to demolish the Nashville Fairgrounds, to name only the ones the city challenged in court — did not specifically name Nashville but applied to counties with a metropolitan form of government and more than 500,000 people, which leaves just Nashville.
This article was first published in the Tennessean,
