Tennessee Courts Beat News Site’s Challenge to Closed Meetings

The Tennessee court system can re-close the meetings of one of its commissions to the press and public because it’s a rulemaking body and not part of an adjudicative process, a federal judge said.

The court granted summary judgment to the director of the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts, who’d been sued by Dan McCaleb, the executive editor of the online news organization The Center Square. The journalist alleged his First Amendment rights were violated when the courts closed to the public the meetings of its Advisory Commission on the Rules of Practice & Procedure, which makes recommendations to ...