A bumper sticker is displayed in Attorney Hank Hill’s office at his law firm on Wednesday, July 24, 2019, in Chattanooga, Tenn. Hill won the U.S. Supreme Court case against TVA which led to the protection of the snail darter fish population through the Endangered Species Act.A drawing of a snail darter sits in the window sill behind Hank Hill’s desk in the office of the Georgia Avenue law firm bearing his name.
The photo of the three-inch-long member of the perch family serves as a reminder of yesteryear. It’s from Hill’s first case – one that took place before he was an attorney – when the lifelong Chattanooga area resident spent years fighting TVA starting as a second-year law student at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
The 1978 case, Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, was one of the most famous conservation fights in Tennessee history and ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Hill’s favor. The ruling halted construction of a decades-long project to build a dam on the Tellico River. The court sided with biologists who argued the dam would kill the remaining snail darter population, violating the newly formed Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Hill and a group of biologists helped get the species federally listed. It was one of the first species protected under the Endangered Species Act and one of the first court cases invoking the act’s protections).
Now, the fish he fought so hard to save may lose federal protection, but conservationists argue the change is good, signaling the blossoming health of the fish’s population.
Protecting the Snail Darter