A Senate ethics complaint has been filed against Sen. Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga) by the families of the three children and three adults who were killed in the Covenant School shooting.
Since June, a legal battle has raged over the release of the Covenant School shooter’s personal journal. While the Metro Nashville Police Department and the families of the Covenant victims have tried to prevent the journal’s release, Gardenhire, along with The Tennessean, the Tennessee Firearms Association, Star News and others have petitioned to have the journal released to the public. Now, the Covenant families believe Gardenhire is pushing a bill that would help him in this situation.
“With the Senate passage of SB2105 under his sponsorship, Senator Gardenhire has moved legislation through the General Assembly from which he stands to personally benefit should it become law,” wrote Erin Kinney, mother of 9-year-old Covenant School shooting victim William Kinney, who filed the complaint on behalf of the Covenant families. “SB2105 would remove the ability of ‘non-governmental’ parties to intervene in public records requests under the Tennessee Public Records Act.”
“It is my understanding that the Senate Ethics Rules would bar an elected State Senator from attempting to change the law at the center of a case they are actively litigating in order to advance their position and prevail in the case,” wrote Kinney.
Article II, Section 1(a) of the code of ethics for the state senate states that a senator has a conflict of interest if the “Senator has reason to believe or expect that he or she will derive a direct monetary gain or any other advantage or suffer a direct monetary loss by reason of his or her official activity.”
The push from Covenant supporters to derail SB 2105 comes almost a month after the bill passed unanimously through the Senate on March 18 and is on the House’s agenda for Thursday. The bill is simple, adding a single line to Tennessee’s law on the denial of public records: “Only a requester has standing to file an action under this section, and intervention by a non-governmental third party in a public records lawsuit is not permitted.” Because the Covenant families are a third party to the litigation over the shooter’s journal, SB2105 would remove their standing to intervene in the release of the journal.
“For well over 100 years, someone who is interested and has a stake in the outcome of litigation can intervene and sort of make their position known and become a litigant in a litigation,” said Alex Little, a lawyer who was involved with the Vanderbilt Rape Case. “That is what we did back when there was a lawsuit to get some of the records related to the Vanderbilt rape case, we intervened on the victim’s behalf. And those were not ultimately released.”
If SB2105 was on the books at the time, the victim in the Vanderbilt rape case would not have been allowed to intervene in that public records case.
“I think people haven’t recognized the impact,” said Little. “Basically any victim, if the rapist or rapist’s friend asked for a public records request of the rape victims entire text message history for example, and the police had that, they could get access to that which is sort of bonkers.”
In litigation over the Covenant assailant’s journal, the Covenant families have argued that the release of the journal could inflict more trauma on the survivors of the shooting. In past school shooting cases, survivors have taken their own life years later. The Covenant families argue that reading the shooter’s writings could take survivors down a dark path.
When the bill passed in the Senate, it passed on a consent calendar with 13 other bills, which means Gardenhire did not have to present it to the full Senate. Gardenhire presented the bill only in the Senate State and Local Government Committee, and he did not disclose his potential conflict. The bill passed through committee unanimously.
“Because the statute in Title X does not specifically prohibit third-party interveners, it is allowed. This bill fixes that and restores the logical, streamlined process envisioned in the statute,” said Gardenhire while presenting the bill in committee. “Third-party interveners take away the government’s control of its own records.”
Kinney and the Covenant families are requesting that the bill be withdrawn and that an ethical inquiry be opened into Gardenhire’s conduct.
The Banner reached out to Gardenhire through multiple channels for comment and has not received a response.