Please Don’t Appeal The Chancery Court Ruling

On June 22, 2021, the Davidson County Chancery Court struck down a July 27 referendum election that had been scheduled by the Davidson County Election Commission. The referendum would have provided a path to take taxing authority away from Metro. That’s illegal under Tennessee law. The Court was unforgiving and held that the Election Commission's decision to call for a July 27 referendum "…was fraught with essential illegality; the Election Commission's decision was arbitrary, capricious, and illegal."

You can read more about it here.

The Election Commission is meeting tomorrow to decide whether to appeal the Chancery Court ruling. I have sent them a letter urging them to not appeal. You can see my letter here.

If you would like to join me in urging the Election Commission to not appeal the ruling, you can email: ElectionCommission@nashville.gov, jim.delanis@nashville.gov, tricia.herzfeld@nashville.gov, jeff.roberts@nashville.gov

For the subject line, you can use: “Please Don’t Appeal”

It is important that you add your name and home address so they know that you live in Nashville. If you are not comfortable listing your address, list the part of town you live in or just your street name.

For the text of your email, here is some sample language:

Dear Commissioners and Director Roberts,

The Election Commission has the discretion to decide whether or not to appeal the Court's ruling. Please don’t appeal. Please accept that trying to take taxing authority away from Metro violates Tennessee law and is bad for all of us. Please forward this email to the Commissioners whose emails addresses are not publicly available.

[ADD YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS]

Let’s make sure that the Election Commission knows that we don’t want them to spend our tax dollars on continued needless litigation and appeals.