Legal commentator and retired attorney Mark Pulliam said a bill moving through the Tennessee General Assembly is designed to fix what he calls a major legal mistake that opened the door to sweeping lawsuits against state laws and government actions.
On Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, Pulliam argued that a 2018 statute unintentionally weakened traditional legal limits on who can sue the state.
“In 2018, the Tennessee legislature inadvertently and in hindsight, erroneously opened a Pandora’s Box by creating an avenue for radical left-wing groups…to undermine the Republican-controlled General Assembly and the actions of Republican Governor Bill Lee by filing unripe lawsuits before left-leaning trial courts,” Pulliam said.
“[It] allowed people to bring facial challenges in front of chancery courts. Of course, leftist groups are gonna pick the most sympathetic chancery courts they can find,” he added
A new bill moving through the General Assembly, Senate Bill 1958, sponsored by State Senator John Stevens (R-District 24), would reaffirm the state’s sovereign immunity and restrict lawsuits challenging state statutes. The measure clarifies that lawsuits seeking declaratory or injunctive relief may be brought only against local governments and not the state itself.
Pulliam said the controversy centers on the legal concept of standing, which determines who can bring a case before a court.
“The requirement is that it has to be a real case or a real controversy, which means that it’s not just a hypothetical situation or a speculative claim… it involves the statute has actually been applied in a specific factual context against an actual person causing real or threatened injury,” Pulliam explained.
Without those limits, he said, courts risk becoming venues for political disputes rather than real legal conflicts.
“If you created a situation where any disgruntled party can challenge a law just because they don’t like it, then you’re going to end up with judicial activism,” Pulliam warned.
According to Pulliam, the 2018 change allowed advocacy organizations to challenge state policies before any real injury had occurred, which, as he said, “unleashed judicial activism.”
Pulliam said most of the lawsuits have been filed in Davidson County, where chancery court judges are elected by voters in a heavily Democratic jurisdiction.
“Almost all of these challenges ended up getting filed in Davidson County… because these chancery court judges and other trial court judges are elected and the voters up in Davidson County elect left-wing people to be on the chancery courts,” Pulliam said.
Chancery courts, Pulliam explained, operate under a legal tradition that allows broader discretion than courts strictly applying statutory law.
“A chancellor… may modify the application of strict legal rules and adapt relief to the circumstances of individual cases.”
Pulliam cited several cases he believes illustrate the consequences of the current system.
Challenges filed in Davidson County chancery court temporarily blocked or attempted to block several high-profile state policies. One lawsuit targeted a school choice pilot program, with a chancery judge ruling it unconstitutional before the Tennessee Supreme Court later overturned that decision.
Another case sought to stop the governor’s deployment of the Tennessee National Guard to address public safety concerns in Memphis, resulting in a temporary injunction that was later appealed.
Pulliam also pointed to lawsuits attempting to invalidate Tennessee’s abortion restrictions and challenges to legislative rules adopted during a special session following the 2022 protests involving the so-called “Tennessee Three.”
In that instance, a chancery judge issued a temporary restraining order after advocacy groups challenged a rule banning protest signs in the House gallery.
He said the pattern amounts to “forum shopping,” with plaintiffs choosing courts they believe will be more sympathetic.
“Why is everybody so in love with Davidson County? Because there’s four judges there. They’re all left-wing Democrats,” he said.
Pulliam argued that many Tennesseans remain unaware of how often such cases are filed.
“The average Tennessee conservative has never heard of chancery courts and has no idea that a lot of these cases are pending,” he said. “What happens in chancery court is pretty secretive and it’s not well reported. It completely lacks transparency.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
