Inside the meeting where Tennessee House leadership adopted controversial rules on signs

New rules in the Tennessee House of Representatives that resulted in state troopers removing Covenant School families from House committee rooms – sparking a lawsuit from the ACLU – originated in a private meeting in House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s conference room on Monday morning.

The typical public notice wasn't made and no members of the public attended, nor any media, despite rules for the 113th General Assembly that require all committees to be open to the public.

Since they were enacted, the new rules have sparked outrage from members of the public and a legal battle with the ACLU. A judge initially blocked the rules and set a hearing date for September. But Sexton and other House leaders are urging the judge to reverse the ruling and grant an expeditated hearing. An emergency hearing is set for Monday morning.

Here's how the rules came about, according to interviews and records obtained by The Tennessean.

Meetings required to be public, no notice given

Permanent House rules for the 113th Tennessee General Assembly require all committees, including ad hoc meetings, to be open to the public.

"Every meeting of the House of Representatives, or any joint committee, standing committee, statutory committee, special committee, select committee, oversight committee, ad hoc committee, any other committee or any subcommittee shall be open to the public," reads Rule 83(8) of the 113th General Assembly Permanent Rules of Order.

Public participation requires public notice. And while the meeting was an official proceeding of a formally appointed House committee, there's no evidence from last week that notice was publicly made of the meeting.

"It would be difficult for a member of the press or a member of the public to observe a committee that was never announced to the public,” Deborah Fisher, executive director of Tennessee Coalition on Open Government told The Tennessean. “It’s hard to go to a meeting that you don’t know about.”

The House Clerk did not provide the typical public notice about the committee meeting, as is usual procedure for House Committee proceedings. For example, the January 2023 Ad Hoc Rules Committee meeting was posted on the legislature's website.

The scheduled meeting did not appear on the legislature’s website or on publicly posted calendars for the day. No advisory was sent to the media.

No media was present during the meeting, nor were any members of the public. No Democratic caucus staff were present. No livestream was made.

"I was surprised that the press wasn't there," House Minority Leader Karen Camper, D-Memphis, told The Tennessean. "Someone from the press is usually there. It's never been a secret meeting."

When asked specifically to provide records of public notice for the meeting, the House Clerk's Office did not respond. Neither Chief House Clerk Tammy Letzler nor House Ethics Counsel Doug Himes responded to repeated inquiries from The Tennessean about the meeting.

State law requires all meetings of governing bodies to be open to the public, and noticed to the public. Tennessee's open meetings law declares action by government entities at meetings that are not public and properly noticed to be "null and void."

But the Tennessee legislature is not subject to state open meetings law.

“The open meetings law, which requires public notice, does not apply to the legislature," Fisher said.

Committee included much of House GOP leadership

Sexton, R-Crossville, appointed an Ad Hoc Rules Committee to discuss changes to the chamber’s rules before the session gaveled in. Letzler announced the committee and meeting time in an email to House members and staff at 7:48 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 18, according a copy of her email obtained by The Tennessean.

"The Ad Hoc Committee is charged with making a recommendation for the Rules of the House of Representatives for the Extraordinary Session," the email reads.

Doug Kufner, a spokesperson for Sexton, called the speaker’s appointment of an Ad Hoc Rules Committee prior to session “standard practice.”

Five of the 11 committee members were House Republican leadership, many of whom do not serve on the Standing House Calendar and Rules Committee. Sexton appointed House Majority Leader William Lamberth, R-Portland, to serve as chair of the committee.

Other committee members included:

• House Minority Leader Karen Camper, D-Memphis

• House Assistant Majority Leader Mark Cochran, R-Englewood

• House Majority Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison, R-Cosby

• House Majority Whip Johnny Garrett, R-Goodlettsville

• House Deputy Speaker Curtis Johnson, R-Clarksville

• House Speaker Pro Tempore Pat Marsh, R-Shelbyville

• Civil Justice Committee Chair Andrew Farmer, R-Sevierville

• Agriculture and Natural Resources Chair Rusty Grills, R-Newbern

• Rep. Johnny Shaw, D-Bolivar

• Rep. Darren Jernigan, D-Nashville

Who proposed the signs ban?

Prior to the meeting, members were directed to submit proposed changes to the rules in writing to Lamberth’s office.

Five members submitted a total of six proposed changes, according to records of the proposals submitted and roll call votes that occurred during the committee obtained from Lamberth's office by The Tennessean through a public records request.

The committee approved three rule changes when it met to hash out the proposals on Monday morning, and decided to send the proposals as a committee report to the House floor.

Sexton himself was not present at the meeting, Kufner said. Johnson was also not present.

The controversial measure to ban signs and banners in the gallery was made by Garrett. Garrett's proposal also included measures to silence members who speak out of turn or off-topic in committees or during floor debate.

“A lot of our discussion was around limiting the peoples voices to be heard," Camper said, of the provision banning signs. “It was a lot of back and forth on that because we did not agree with that at all."

Camper said Grills, a Republican, joined Democrats in pushing back on some of the changes, but GOP leadership backing the signs ban stood strong.

"They kept emphasizing keeping order," Camper said, recalling that leadership argued that since House members could not hold signs or props on the House floor, that spectators in the gallery should also be barred from doing so.

"They kept representing that they thought it was decorum. We were like 'that's wrong — you're silencing people's voices,'" Camper said. "Johnny Shaw was talking about how a lot of these things could be handled in caucuses."

Committee members voted 7 to 3 along party lines to adopt Garrett's proposal.

"We weren't able to get the votes," Camper said, noting that despite pushing back, Grills ultimately supported all the rules changes.

The committee also unanimously adopted a proposal from Garrett to allow the House to operate in "flow motion," suspending typical notice deadlines for bills flowing through committees, and one change to House Rule 21 from Jernigan, to allow a one-minute rebuttal during debate if a bill sponsor leaves less than one minute on the debate clock while responding to another member's question.

Members voted down a proposal from Rep. Caleb Hemmer, D-Nashville, to allow the House to vote to overrule the House clerk on what bills fall outside the scope of the special session, if the Senate Clerks have permitted a companion bill to be filed. Camper withdrew a proposal to remove the five-minute limit on debate on the House floor. Rep. Torrey Harris, D-Memphis, proposed a change but did not attend the meeting to present it.

Rules adopted after heated floor debate

During floor debate on Monday, Lamberth and Garrett proposed the rules package, saying it had been “unanimously” adopted by the Ad Hoc Committee. Which, technically, it was.

But during debate in the House on Monday, it became unclear whether House Democrats on the committee supported the proposed rules changes.

“I enjoyed our conversation this morning. I thought we had a good, robust conversation,” Shaw said. “However, I did not vote for the rules that were added this morning, as you know.”

Lamberth later clarified that while the committee ultimately adopted the whole package, there were certain rule changes that “different members of the rules committee definitely voted against.”

Lamberth and Garrett argued that the rules allow for “smaller responses” to unruly members – short of censure and expulsion.

“This is very simple and straightforward: don’t cause a material disruption, stay on the topic of the bill, and at the end of the day, don’t impugn another member or this body,” Lamberth said during House floor debate on the new rules. “Let’s stay on the issues. Let’s not insult each other.”

The House adopted the rules on a party line vote, despite objections from most of the Democratic caucus.

"These rules scare me. They scare me as an American who believes in a free state and a democracy," said Rep. Jason Powell, D-Nashville. "We did not come up here for special session to limit speech of the members of this body."

“This is a dangerous step that we were taking," he added.

Rules spark 1A lawsuit, AG opinion request

Since the House adopted rules determined at the meeting, spectators were initially prohibited from holding signs in the House chamber and committee room galleries – and Covenant families and other demonstrators have been removed from watching public proceedings.

"We silenced their voice with some of the rules, cordoning people off, not letting them gain access to the galleries and the signs and all of that," Camper told reporters Thursday evening. "I feel like we further silence them by not addressing the real issues that they wanted us to address in this special session."

The ACLU of Tennessee filed a lawsuit Wednesday claiming that the signs ban prevents spectators from exercising their First Amendment rights, and a Davidson County judge almost immediately issued a temporary order prohibiting House officials from enforcing the prohibition of signs.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, representing Sexton and other House officials, asked Martin to lift the order on Thursday, arguing that it threatens separation of powers between branches of government, and that the court “abused its discretion” by issuing the order.

“The disregard for separation of powers in this instance threatens to erode the structural protections that fortify the judicial and executive branches against undue incursions by the General Assembly,” the filing reads.

Further, he argues that legislative galleries are “nonpublic fora subject to relaxed constitutional scrutiny," and that the plaintiffs did not establish that the sign ban violates constitutional protections of freedom of speech.

On Thursday, Powell sent a letter to Gov. Bill Lee asking the legal basis for delegating police powers of the Tennessee Highway Patrol to committee chairmen.

"We all witnessed the parents of school shooting survivors forcibly removed from a committee solely at the direction of a member of the general assembly," Powell wrote.

Sen. Charlane Oliver, D-Nashville, requested an opinion from the Attorney General on the constitutionality of the new House rules, arguing that they violate the constitutional rights of her constituents.

"Do the rules of the House and Senate to maintain order and decorum supersede the constitutional rights set forth in the United States Constitution and Tennessee Constitution?" Oliver asked. "Whose authority or powers permit these activities?"

Reach reporter Vivian Jones at vjones@tennessean.com or on X and Threads at @Vivian_E_Jones. 

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee House sign rules: Private meeting led to changes