Shelby County Circuit Court Judge Mary Wagner on Friday ruled that Alicia Franklin will not have her civil case against the city of Memphis re-opened. Franklin said she was raped by Cleotha Abston-Henderson a year before he was charged with Eliza Fletcher's murder and kidnapping in September. The Commercial Appeal reports that Franklin's case — which alleges the Memphis Police Department did not investigate her rape despite providing the name, contact information and social media account of the man who did it — was dismissed in March this year.

The Cozza Law Group is planning an expansion to Nashville this fall. The Nashville Post reports that the firm is focused on business and entertainment law and has a presence in New York City and Pittsburgh. Firm founder Rocco Cozza is also the CEO of Alpha LPO, a legal process outsourcing provider.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee yesterday appointed Shari Tayloe as District Attorney General for the 10th Judicial District to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of General Stephen Crump, effective immediately. The 10th Judicial District covers Bradley, McMinn, Monroe and Polk counties. Tayloe brings nearly 25 years of prosecutorial experience to her new role, most recently serving as deputy district attorney general for the 10th Judicial District, a position she has held for six years. Tayloe earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and her law degree at the University of Tennessee College of Law.

“Welcome to Capitol Hill,” a new book by veteran Tennessee state house reporters Joel Ebert and Erik Schelzig, will be available Aug. 17 through Vanderbilt University Press. The book covers Gov. Ray Blanton's pardon scandals, the secret FBI wiretap used in the Rocky Top investigation and more recent examples of sexual misconduct in the legislature. Axios Nashville reports that the authors say studying the scandals is more than just an academic exercise; it reveals the vital importance of the media as a watchdog. Several times, the public learned of politicians' dubious behavior through investigations by Nashville journalists, including Schelzig and Ebert's own reporting of the more recent scandals.

The Wilder Youth Development Center in Fayette County, from which three juveniles escaped in March, will receive almost $2 million for updates, including security cameras and more than 100 beds. According to ABC24 in Memphis, a recent report by Disability Rights Tennessee entitled “Designed to Fail: A Report on Wilder Youth Development Center, a Department of Children’s Services Facility," documented what the rights group describe as “destructive practices” upheld by the Wilder Center. The report also alleged that parties responsible for investigations of physical and sexual assault did not follow up or perform in-depth reviews of center employees who were the subject of 10 or more investigations.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has proposed a new rule that would prohibit disclosure of medical records of individuals who cross state lines to obtain legal abortion or gender-affirming care. The Tennessee Lookout reports that Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has joined counterparts in 18 states in an effort to prevent the federal government from shielding those records. Under the proposed rule, the records would be protected from law enforcement, court subpoenas in civil lawsuits and family court proceedings.

The Montgomery County Commission has approved a $180,600 grant from the Tennessee Mental Health Court Program to launch a new mental health court in the county, News Channel 5 reports. The county had previously received a $232,000 grant for the court. The program will be voluntary for residents of the county facing criminal charges, said Circuit Court Judge Katy Olita. Some offenses will be excluded, including all Class A felonies. Sharita Brown will be the court's coordinator. The new court will begin taking applications on Sept. 7.

The Department of Education last week began notifying more than 804,000 borrowers that they will have a total of $39 billion in federal student loans automatically forgiven. The move comes after the U.S. Supreme Court found that the administration exceeded its authority in creating a loan forgiveness program that would have benefitted 43 million individuals and forgiven up to $400 billion. The Education Department reports that the new plan relies on the Higher Education Act, which allows it to adjust qualifying payments that were not properly credited to student accounts. In a press release about the action, the department said the move is intended to “address historical failures in the administration of the Federal student loan program in which qualifying payments … should have moved borrowers closer to forgiveness [but] were not accounted for.”

The Metro Nashville Police Department plans to leave $5.25 million in new state funding for school resource officers (SRO) on the table, saying the agency does not have capacity to staff the district’s 70 public elementary schools. Instead, the department will seek $3.38 million in state grant funding to support existing positions at middle and high schools. For elementary schools, it will continue its previous policy of conducting patrols around campuses, the Tennessean reports. The state SRO funding was approved in the wake of the deadly shooting at The Covenant School in March.

Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Paula Skahan ruled in favor of the Shelby County district attorney and a local defense attorney, saying that a state law passed earlier this year to strip all post-conviction death penalty proceedings from local district attorneys is unconstitutional, the Tennessean reports. Specifically, Skahan found that the General Assembly did not give proper notice to the public about the law and that the law wrongfully removed jurisdiction from locally elected district attorneys. Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy and defense attorney Robert Hutton brought the suit. They also argued that the law violates the rights of voters but Skahan did not address that issue. The state attorney general has until Aug. 4 to appeal the decision.