TBA CLE’s Disability Law Forum 2022 will cover a variety of topics applicable to disability law practitioners, including a panel discussion on in-person hearings, a session dedicated to appealing ALJ decisions and more! Join the program on Sept. 30 from 9 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. CDT via Zoom Meeting. Learn more and get registered here.

The Tennessee Department of Correction yesterday announced it has received a $200,000 grant that will help temporarily house indigent people who are leaving prison, the Associated Press reports. In partnership with the Tennessee Housing Development Agency, the grant will pay for up to 60 days of housing for those who qualify for the program. TDOC Commissioner Lisa Helton says the program will give those leaving prison “time to focus on securing employment and saving for permanent housing when they first leave incarceration.” She also says affordable housing “helps to reduce the likelihood of re-offending.”

As executive assistant and events coordinator at the TBA, Karen Belcher works closely with Executive Director Joycelyn Stevenson and the TBA’s Board of Governors and House of Delegates to keep meetings and events, like our Annual Convention, running smoothly! She’s undeterred by complex business meetings, but don’t ask Karen to go on a canoe trip – she’s terrified of snakes and thinks it’s probable that one could fall from a tree into the canoe!

Ever wanted to know more about the moving parts, projects and people of the Tennessee Bar Association? Look for a #TeamTBA post on all our social media outlets and in TBA Today for a closer look at each staff member, their role in the association and maybe a fun fact or two! #TeamTBA profiles are posted every Wednesday. Find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Polls are open until 7 p.m. CDT today for Tennessee’s primary election to determine party nominees for governor, Congress and state legislative seats, the Associated Press reports. Early voting turnout was down 23.8% this year compared to the 2018 election when there was an open governor’s race with contested Republican and Democratic primaries. Compared with the same point in 2014, turnout is down 15.4%. The AP has a statewide look at tonight’s election and more information. Live results from local elections can be found here for Davidson, Hamilton, Knox and Shelby counties. Results from any race can be found on the Tennessee Secretary of State's website. 

The U.S. Justice Department today charged four current and former Louisville, Kentucky, police officers for their roles in the 2020 raid that killed Breonna Taylor, Reuters reports. Former Louisville Metropolitan Police Department Detective Joshua Jaynes and current Sergeant Kyle Meany were charged with civil rights violations and obstruction of justice for using false information to obtain the search warrant that authorized the raid. Current Detective Kelly Goodlett was charged with conspiring with Jaynes to falsify the warrant and then cover up the falsification, and former Detective Brett Hankison was charged with civil rights violations for allegedly using excessive force. Taylor, a Black woman, was in killed in her home during a nighttime raid in March 2020 as police looked for her former boyfriend.

The Beck Cultural Center in Knoxville is calling on Gov. Bill Lee to exonerate Maurice F. Mays — a Black man the center says was wrongfully executed in 1922. Mays was accused of killing a 27-year-old white woman during a home invasion in 1919. He was identified by the victim’s brother in a quick police lineup, convicted of the crime one month later, and executed in 1922 at the age of 35. The Beck Center is working with a legal team to ask the governor for a formal exoneration. Beck Center President Renee Kesler would like to acknowledge Mays “and his death in a proper way.” The Beck Center will open a permanent exhibit devoted to Mays at the end of the month. Read more from Knoxville’s WBIR.

The Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Bus has now offered free legal services to clients in all three grand divisions of the state, the Administrative Office of the Courts reports. The Justice Bus made its way to East Tennessee with a visit to the American Jobs Center in Chattanooga last month where the Chattanooga Bar Association Young Lawyers Division helped provide assistance with civil legal issues and criminal law on expungement cases. It stopped in Middle Tennessee where it visited the Murfreesboro Day Reporting and Community Resource Center for its job and resource fair and helped 10 clients with issues ranging from expungement to family law. Recent events also included trips to an expungement clinic in Memphis, a Smyrna job fair, and an event with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition Clinic in Nashville. Trips to Sullivan, Knox and Obion counties are scheduled for this month.

The Germantown Board of Mayor and Aldermen will decide next week whether to appoint a municipal court judge to temporarily replace Judge Raymond Clift Jr., the Daily Memphian reports. Clift is guaranteed an eight-year term as he runs unopposed on today’s ballot, but he is currently on a temporary leave of absence. In Clift’s absence, Judge Robert Brannon has been filling in, but the board on Monday will consider naming Kevin Patterson as temporary judge to help with Brannon’s workload. Patterson is a local attorney with more than 30 years of experience and has previously served the city as judge when a substitute has been needed.

More than one month after its first lawsuit was dismissed, national LGBT organization the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is taking the state back to court over its trans bathroom law, WPLN reports. HRC is suing on behalf of a Williamson County family and their 8-year-old child who, according to the Associated Press, was assigned male at birth but identifies as female. State law prohibits the student, identified as D.H., from using the girls' bathroom at school. The school allows D.H. to use one of four single-occupancy restrooms, which “reinforce the differential treatment” of D.H., violating her constitutional rights, the suit claims. HRC originally filed suit earlier this year on behalf of two Wilson County families with transgender children, but both families moved out of state before the lawsuit made its way through the court. The suit seeks an injunction against the bathroom law.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the death sentence of Clarksville man William Glenn Rogers, the Tennessean reports. Rogers, who was sentenced to death for the 1996 rape and murder of a nine-year-old Clarksville girl, raised claims of possible ineffective assistance of counsel and questions regarding the sufficiency of evidence against him. Judges Karen Nelson Moore and Jane Branstetter Stranch and Senior Judge Helene N. White heard the case. Moore wrote in the majority opinion that Rogers's counsel during the sentencing phase "makes us doubt whether this phase of trial produced a fair result." The opinion did not rule on innocence or guilt, but leaves the door open for the trial court to review claims of ineffective assistance on Rogers's motion for a new trial after his initial conviction.