TBA Law Blog

TBA Law Blog

Judge Rules Chattanooga Council Violated Open Meetings Law

Posted by: Azya Thornton on Jul 11, 2025
News Type: Legal News

A judge ruled in favor of the Chattanooga Times Free Press in its lawsuit against the city of Chattanooga, council members and staff, establishing that open meetings laws were violated during non-public meetings on redrawing local voting districts, the Times Free Press reports. In an order last week granting the newspaper’s motion for summary judgment, the Chattanooga City Council must follow Tennessee’s Open Meetings Act and submit to one year of oversight, in addition to writing a semiannual report on its compliance. Every decade after federal census results are released, the council reorganizes and adjusts the map that determines how residents are represented in city government. The lawsuit, filed in 2022, claimed the redistricting process was too secretive, from closed-door redistricting committee meetings to a series of calls and emails between council members and city staff to make decisions about redistricting. According to the order, individual meetings between council members and staff resulted in map changes, so decisions were made in meetings that were not open to the public. The City Council will comply with the open meetings act, "which we believe they did," Chattanooga City Attorney Phillip Noblett said to the news outlet.

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