(The Center Square) – Four Memphis office holders and three state lawmakers filed a legal challenge to the deployment of the National Guard in Memphis.
The case filed in Davidson County Chancery Court says the Tennessee constitution limits when the governor can deploy the National Guard. A judge denied a temporary restraining order and set a hearing for Nov. 3.
President Donald Trump signed a memorandum of understanding on Sept. 15 authorizing the guard’s presence in Memphis.
State Sen. Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville, has challenged the constitutionality of the deployment.
“No legitimate law enforcement operation can be based on the state violating its own laws,” Yarbro said in a release from Democracy Forward, a national legal foundation. “Tennessee’s constitution has prohibited using military forces to police Tennessee citizens for over 150 years, and the governor and attorney general shouldn’t be playing fast and loose with the law or using our National Guard as political props.”
Gov. Bill Lee and Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti are named in the lawsuit. The Center Square was unsuccessful prior to publication of getting comment from either.
Yarbro previously accused Skrmetti during a news conference of withdrawing an opinion that would appear to back Yarbro’s claims that the National Guard deployment is unconstitutional.
“The incorrect reasoning in the withdrawn opinion No. 21-05, which these legislators would like to rely on, would ban the National Guard from helping with disaster relief efforts in Tennessee,” Skrmetti said in an email to The Center Square. “If the folks at the press conference are insinuating my office withdrew these opinions six months before the election to pave the way for Trump policies a year and a half later, they have bigger problems than this legal question. If I could see the future like that, I’d be neck deep in Bitcoin and Pokémon cards.”
The other plaintiffs in the case are Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, Memphis City Councilmember J.B. Smiley Jr., Shelby County Commissioners Henri E. Brooks and Erika Sugarmon, and state Reps. G.A. Hardaway, D-Memphis, and Gabby Salinas, D-Memphis.
“The deployment of the National Guard in this manner is unconstitutional, as the Constitution permits such action only through the General Assembly in cases of rebellion or invasion, neither of which exists today,” Harris said. “Rather than restoring order, this action erodes public trust and heightens fear, underscoring that real public safety comes from investing in education, housing, and mental health, not from militarizing our communities.”
The National Guard is part of the multi-agency Memphis Safe Street Task Force designed to reduce violent crime.
Lee told reporters during a news conference broadcast on local media last week that the operation would go on “as long as it takes.”
“The way we will measure success obviously is be violent crime and the reduction of that crime,” Lee said. “We’ve just begun. In fact, I will tell you that it will last forever because what we believe will happen is the number of law enforcement agents from different agencies will change depending on the mission at the moment. It will be mission dependent. What we find this week will inform what we do next week.”
