This year's Immigration Law Forum will cover timely topics affecting immigration attorneys. Sessions will include the discussion of the Southeastern Provision plant raid, family law immigration updates and the intersection of criminal and immigration law. Join us in person May 10 at 1212 Germantown in Nashville. Registration is from 8:30-9 a.m. with programming running from 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m. CDT.

The Tennessee Bar Association’s online renewal for 2023-2024 is now open! Renew your membership to continue your access to CLE programming with three pre-paid credits, TBA’s Practice Management Center, free online legal research through Fastcase, and timely information through TBA Today, TBA Podcasts and the Tennessee Bar Journal. Be sure to check out the new career center and watch this fall for TBA’s Group Health Insurance enrollment. Attorneys not participating in the TBA's firm billing program can login and access renewal information through their MyTBA dashboard.

Novel Bookstore in Memphis is hosting an event for former Tennessee Bar Journal editor Suzanne Craig Robertson's new book, "He Called Me Sister: A True Story of Finding Humanity on Death Row." The event will be on May 6 at 2 p.m. CDT and will be a conversation between Robertson and former TBA president Bill Haltom. No advance registration is required. The memoir recounts the Robertson family's 15-year friendship with Cecil Johnson, who was on Tennessee's death row and was executed in 2009. Drawing from Johnson's own memoir, news accounts and court documents, the book also features interviews with many lawyers involved in the case. Preorders are available from Novel and other online retailers. A similar event is scheduled in Knoxville on April 27.

ABC News 24 reports that Gov. Bill Lee made an emergency declaration to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for Hardeman, Hardin, Haywood, Lewis, Macon, McNairy, Rutherford, Tipton and Wayne counties for debris removal and emergency protective measures related to the March 31 and April 1 tornado and severe weather response. If that request is granted, FEMA will also provide direct aid to eligible Tennessee residents in the requested counties for disaster-related costs and expenses. 

The Tennessee House of Representatives has expelled the first of three Democratic members who were at risk of being thrown out of the legislature for their role in a demonstration calling for gun control after the Nashville school shooting, the Associated Press reports. The vote Thursday to oust Rep. Justin Jones of Nashville was an extraordinary move the chamber has used only a handful times since the Civil War. The House was also to consider ousting Reps. Gloria Johnson, Knoxville, and Justin Pearson, Memphis. Votes on those expulsions were expected later today. The move comes a week after the trio chanted back and forth from the chamber floor with gun-control supporters who packed the gallery. House lawmakers voted 72-25 to remove Jones. 

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland says that the results of a federal investigation into the Memphis Police Department (MPD) will show whether Tyre Nichols’ death was part of broader cultural issues in the MPD, reports The Daily Memphian. During an appearance on the paper’s On the Record podcast, Strickland did not dismiss the idea that the department’s culture contributed to the lack of intervention observed before and after Nichols’ encounter with MPD. “It certainly brings up a question of whether there is a culture problem, whether this was just the officers who were there or is there a bigger problem in the police department,” Strickland said. 

Lawyers for the city of Nashville yesterday argued before a three-judge panel to block a new law that cuts the Metro Council in half from 40 to 20, calling it an unconstitutional intrusion into local governance with an unrealistic timeline. Axios Nashville reports that the law requires Metro to reshape the Aug. 3 election by creating and approving new district maps by the May 18 filing deadline. If the council misses the deadline, the law would extend existing members' terms by one year. The panel will decide if part or all of the law should be blocked while the court battle is underway.

Gov. Bill Lee last week signed a law allowing private schools to contract with local law enforcement so they can hire school resource officers. The law takes effect immediately. Supporters said the bill was needed to clarify statutes that had kept private schools from working with local governments to hire school resource officers. The law now clears the path for them to do so, but does not make it a requirement. The Associated Press has the full story.

The Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands (LAS) on Wednesday raised over $140,000 at its fifth annual Breakfast of Champions. This event brings together Middle Tennessee’s legal community and businesses in support of LAS. The funds raised at this event directly impact the low-income and vulnerable communities of Middle Tennessee by providing free community education and legal representation against illegal evictions, domestic violence, predatory lending and elder abuse.

A bill to add exceptions to Tennessee’s strict abortion ban has passed the state Senate. It now goes to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk for his signature or veto. The Tennessean reports that it's unlikely he will veto the bill, which would allow doctors to legally perform abortions to save the life of a pregnant patient. The legislation, Senate Bill 745 as amended, explicitly exempts ectopic and molar pregnancies from Tennessee's abortion ban, in addition to allowing doctors to perform abortions if in their "reasonable" medical judgment an abortion would prevent the death or "to prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman."