Judge puts Sumner County Commissioners on notice they may be held in contempt – Tennessee Lookout

A Chancery Court judge is putting members of the Sumner County Commission on notice they could be individually held in contempt in an ongoing legal dispute with the county’s election commission.

On Tuesday, Sumner County Chancery Court Judge Louis Oliver, III admonished an attorney during a court hearing over the county commission’s public efforts to embarrass Lori Atchley, the election’s administrator, while she is a litigant in a case against them.

Late Thursday, Oliver ordered that each member of the commission, along with Sumner County Mayor John Isbell, be given a copy of an injunction issued last month that prevents the officials from taking actions against the election commission or its employees while the legal dispute continues.

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Oliver’s order noted that each individual county commissioner, as well as the commission as a whole, is subject that injunction. The judge’s order on Thursday reminded county officials that they are subject to regular court rules that say: “compliance with such order or injunction may be compelled or its disobedience punished as a contempt by a judge of the court in which the action is pending.”

J. Ross Pepper, representing the Sumner County Commissioners, said “the order speaks for itself,” when reached for comment Friday. The attorney for the election commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The judge’s order comes at the end of an eventful week involving the ongoing dispute between members of the Sumner County Commission and the county’s election commission.

The County Commission began the week on Monday by voting in favor of a resolution asking the Legislature to remove Atchley, and all members of the election commission board, from office — an unusual move by county leaders whom, by law, have no authority over the operations of independent election bodies.

The resolution singled out Atchley specifically and personally, accusing her, among other things, of “moral turpitude.”

The next day, Oliver admonished the county commission’s attorney for its actions. Oliver also denied the county commission’s request to dismiss the case entirely.

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The legal dispute is rooted in a seemingly routine disagreement over office space that has since spiraled into a months-long acrimonious and public battle that has played out in county commission meetings and on social media.

The County Commission is led by a majority of members backed by the Constitutional Republican movement in Sumner County, which says it seeks to both bring a Christian foundation to governance while limiting the authority of local government.

Since taking office, however, the newly elected members have made a series of decisions that have earned criticism for exerting or extending the powers of local government in controversial ways. The commission is facing a lawsuit for trying to give away a historic county-owned property to a private group. This week it voted to dissolve the county’s human resources department. And it has voted to limit funding to the election commission to pay its workers.

Constitutional Republican-backed majority has also sought to evict election officials from their new offices after learning a previous mayor had okayed the move without gaining commission approval.

The eviction would have ousted the election officials from their offices and warehouse space used to store voting machines — potentially leaving machines unsecured and out of easy reach of election officials who need ready access to them.

The election commission filed suit in May against the County Commission and the mayor alleging that that their actions “threaten the integrity of the 2024 election before a single vote has been cast.”

 

Order From Hearing on June 27, 2023 Filed 6-29-2023 by Anita Wadhwani on Scribd

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