A history lesson for GOP leaders

House Speaker Cameron Sexton, center, with House Majority Leader William Lamberth at left and GOP Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison. (Photo: John Partipilo)

Dear Gov. Lee, Lt. Gov. McNally, and Mr. Speaker Sexton,

Tennessee has already seen the movie you are producing and directing, and trust me, it doesn’t end well for you. Now maybe not you personally.  It may take a few years, maybe even a decade, but eventually it will happen.

You see, you are directing and producing the sequel to Kovach v. Maddux.  The circumstances and the times are different, but the plot line is the same: Elected officials acting as if the public and the press shouldn’t be meddling in the public’s business; just leave it to the pols.

Those names may not be familiar to you.  I’m told the teaching of Tennessee history isn’t what it used to be, and Kovach v. Maddux was decided in 1965. Bill Kovach was a legislative reporter for The Nashville Tennessean and Jered Maddux was the lieutenant governor.  Back then, legislative committees routinely went into secret sessions.  Don’t you wish you could do that? Well, The Nashville Tennessean decided to challenge the practice.

So, when a Senate committee voted to go into secret session one day, Kovach refused to leave while the other reporters complied.  What was the committee to do?  Asking him again didn’t work.  They couldn’t find a sergeant at arms to hustle him out. (Not like these days when there appear to be state troopers aplenty!)  So, they adjourned.

But the next day, the entire Senate decided to teach the newspaper a lesson.  The Senate passed a resolution effectively barring all Nashville Tennessean reporters from the Senate floor where the press gallery was.

It’s like they had never read Br’er Rabbit!

Yep, The Nashville Tennessean sued the lieutenant governor in federal court.  The judge was William E. Miller, a well-respected Republican judge first appointed to the bench by President Dwight Eisenhower and eventually named to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals by President Richard Nixon.

Your current behavior — such as telling reporters the ground floor of the Capitol is private, or telling a citizen she can’t sit quietly in the House gallery with her sign protesting a piece of legislation, or even removing shouting protestors from the Senate gallery – says one thing: Leave the public’s business to us.

You really should go read his opinion (U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee – 238 F. Supp. 835 (M.D. Tenn. 1965) February 22, 1965).

It reads like a textbook, citing various cases on the importance of a free press to American democracy but also balancing the legitimate rights of a legislative body to protect the conduct of its business.

The problem, the judge ruled in essence, was that the state Senate went overboard.

“It is true that Kovach, as shown by the evidence, was guilty of disrupting the orderly proceedings of the Senate Committee on Local Government in refusing to leave the Committee room at the request of its Chairman. It is also true that this was done, as Kovach states in his affidavit, because he was acting under the orders and directions of the Editor of his newspaper to refuse to leave any committee meeting when its proceedings were to be conducted in secret session until he was requested to leave by a Sergeant-at-Arms,” the judge wrote in his opinion.

But in analyzing the Senate’s resolution, the judge said, “On the facts of the case now before the Court, the restriction upon the freedom of the press and the denial of access to the news imposed by Senate Resolution No. 9, go far beyond any reasonable measures required to protect the Senate in the discharge of its duties or to preserve its dignity and decorum.”

The judge permanently enjoined the Senate from barring The Nashville Tennessean reporters, and the edifice of secret legislative meetings began to crumble.  By January 1967, the newspaper trumpeted in end-of-the-world headline type on its front page: “ANTI-SECRECY RULE ADOPTED”.

Alison Polidor, a Nashville woman, being removed from the House of Representatives gallery. She was detained by state troopers and later released with no charges. (Photo: John Partipilo)

And, that is your problem: You don’t have a sense of balance, and all your current behavior — such as telling reporters the ground floor of the Capitol is private, or telling a citizen she can’t sit quietly in the House gallery with her sign protesting a piece of legislation, or even removing shouting protestors from the Senate gallery – says one thing: Leave the public’s business to us.

My colleagues and I in the Capitol Hill press corps for more than a half century – and most importantly the public — were the beneficiaries of Kovach v. Maddux.  Without invitation, we walked into the governor’s office, the deputy governor’s office, the office of the governor’s legal counsel, the finance commissioner’s, the constitutional officers’, and, yes, staff offices on the ground floor of the Capitol asking questions, getting information, getting educated and informing our readers, viewers, and listeners.

Article I, Section 19 of the Tennessee Constitution was alive then. Judge Miller quoted it in part:

“Freedom of speech and press. That the printing presses shall be free to every person to examine the proceedings of the Legislature; or of any branch or officer of the government, 

and no law shall ever be made to restrain the right thereof. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the invaluable rights of man, and every citizen may freely speak, write, and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty.”

It still is.  You just need to remember it.

Sincerely,

Jim O’Hara

(O’Hara covered the Tennessee General Assembly from 1983 to 1990 for The Tennessean.  He and fellow Tennessean reporter Phil Williams were Pulitzer Prize finalists in 1990 for their reporting on corruption in state government related to charitable bingo operations.)

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