TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Julia Wilburn on Oct 17, 2024

Davidson County Chancellor Patricia Head Moskal last week ruled that the city of Forest Hills could change the names of Confederate-themed streets, overruling the state's Historical Commission, which said the names were protected under the Heritage Protection Act, which specifically seeks to preserve Civil War-era monuments. The Tennessee Lookout reports that attorneys for the city have long argued the act should not apply to streets within subdivisions that were built on private property by private developers who constructed and named roads before they were formally recognized and adopted as public streets. State attorneys argued that the language of the act does not address this issue, and that the act requires that any street with a historic name that is now a public street remains subject to the law.