Will Nashville have to shrink its council? Judges to decide soon
Judges will soon decide if Nashville will have to halve the size of its Metro Council.
City and state lawyers clashed in a virtual court hearing Monday morning over a 2023 law capping the size of metropolitan councils at 20 members. The judges blocked the law from going into effect last April but didn't strike it down entirely.
Metro Law Director Wally Dietz praised the city's argument by Allison Bussell.
"Associate Law Director Allison Bussell’s argument was brilliant," Dietz said in a statement after the hearing. "We appreciate the Court’s preparation and questions and remain optimistic the will of Nashville voters will be upheld."
On paper, the law targeted every city and metropolitan government in the state. But in practice, it immediately affects only Nashville, since no other city or metropolitan government has a council with more than 20 members.
The city argued that because the law only affected Nashville, it violated the Tennessee Constitution's "home rule amendment" that bars the state from passing laws that impact only a particular county or city in its governmental capacity without local voter approval.
The law also required a breakneck implementation timeline for Nashville, which the city argued would have caused "chaos" and disrupted the upcoming Metro Council election. Metro sued the state just four days after the rule was signed into law, and a three-judge panel last April blocked it from going into effect for that summer's election.
Now, the timeline for when to implement the changes has passed. And a clause directly linking the 20-member limit to the specific method and timeline of enforcement may be its downfall.
The first part of the law states that "the membership of a metropolitan council must not exceed twenty (20) voting members, as further provided in this section," which Bussell argued inextricably links it to the second part of the law, which lays out when and how to change a council's size.
Bussell argued that now that the law's second section is out of date, "the act crumbles underneath itself."
Timothy Simonds from the Tennessee Attorney General's Office disagreed and said that the first section establishing the 20-member limit can stand on its own. But he argued that if needed, the judges could strike the phrase linking the two sections. He failed, however, to cite any specific examples of courts making such line-by-line deletions when asked.
A three-judge panel will decide the case. On the panel are Nashville Chancellor Patricia Head Moskal; Chancellor Jerri Bryant over the 10th District Chancery Court in East Tennessee; and Circuit Court Judge Joseph Howell in West Tennessee's 26th Judicial District.
Voters chose to consolidate Davidson County and Nashville's governments in 1963, operating as the Metro Nashville government since.
Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him at emealins@gannett.com or follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @EvanMealins.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville council size lawsuit: Judges to rule on 20-member limit
