In a Monday hearing, Chancellor Pat Moskal heard arguments for and opposed to a temporary injunction against the National Guard’s current presence in Memphis. Moskal said she will issue a written ruling as soon as she can.
The motion for the injunction stemmed from an Oct. 17 lawsuit filed by Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and several state representatives against Gov. Bill Lee’s October deployment of the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis. On the same day, the plaintiffs filed a motion for a temporary restraining order, which Moskal denied; after that, she set yesterday’s hearing.
Plaintiff’s attorney Josh Salzman from Democracy Forward used the word “terrifying” several times throughout his arguments, calling the National Guard’s deployment “as unlawful as it is shocking.” Weaving in and out of state statutes and the Tennessee Constitution, Salzman took issue with what he saw as troubling precedents the deployment could set — that the governor could bypass the general assembly and courts in unilaterally deploying troops in non-emergency situations, and that cities and counties could not assert their rights against the state in courts.
“(Let’s) just apply our common sense here,” Salzman said.
(READ MORE: Shelby County mayor, elected officials sue Gov. Bill Lee over National Guard deployment)
Representing the state, Cody Brandon from the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office began by taking a shot at the plaintiffs’ out-of-state legal team, asking them to “indulge” him in a “moment of state pride.” He ran through a history of Tennessee as the Volunteer State and of past work by the Tennessee National Guard. He called Memphis one of “America’s great cities” and discussed its high violent crime rates, which he said constituted an emergency that validated the deployment of the guard.
Brandon argued against the plaintiffs’ legal standing, saying they couldn’t point to a specific harm. He also framed the dispute as a political discussion. He argued that the plaintiffs filed the suit because they disagreed with Lee, and that the deployment was “not their decision to make,” and it was “wrong for them to ask the court to pick up the governor’s pen and command the National Guard.”
“A political dispute belongs in the ballot box and the public forum, not in court.”
Moskal seemed to push back somewhat against this argument. If the governor took the action of deploying the national guard, she asked, how was the decision purely political? “This is an operational decision,” she said, in response to what she called the “perceived emergency” of crime in Memphis.
During his rebuttal, Salzman said the defense made “no effort” to disclaim his assertion that Lee was allowed to deploy troops and tanks “whenever and wherever he wants, for as long as he wants.” If the deployment stood, Salzman said, it would show that “we are all subject to the whims of the governor.”
Moskal was bothered by the lack of a written order in the record from Lee to deploy the National Guard. Both sides could only point to a press release. She also requested more precise language from Salzman regarding the injunction he sought.
A NATIONAL ISSUE
On Sept. 13, President Donald Trump posted a message on Truth Social stating that, at his direction, the FBI would be used to help control crime in Memphis. Two days later, Lee met with Trump in the Oval Office. The resulting memo, “Restoring Law and Order in Memphis,” eventually led to the formation of a task force comprising various agencies, including members of the Tennessee National Guard, who began patrolling Memphis on Oct. 10.
According to the original Oct. 17 lawsuit, Gov. Lee deployed the National Guard under Title 32 status, a hybrid federal/state setup that can be activated by state governors for training or “other duties.” The lawsuit stated that National Guard personnel can perform domestic law enforcement functions under Title 32, but they are still “subject to restrictions under state law.”
The lawsuit argued that Lee’s actions violated the Tennessee Constitution, which states that “the Militia shall not be called into service except in case of rebellion or invasion, and then only when the General Assembly shall declare, by law, that the public safety requires it.”
The lawsuit also cited Tennessee statutes that forbid unilateral deployment of the military for civilian law enforcement, as opposed to a response to a request from a local government. The lawsuit cited language that allowed for National Guard deployment in case of “invasion, disaster, insurrection, riot, or attack … to oppose the enforcement of the law by force or violence,” but not for crime fighting or police work.
The lawsuit also alleged that the deployment of the National Guard in Memphis usurped local representatives’ authority and — citing troops in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. — harmed the city by disrupting business activity, an assertion that Brandon disagreed with during the hearing. The suit also argued that the deployment of the Tennessee National Guard in Memphis kept those personnel from responding to other critical situations.
The widespread use of the National Guard has garnered attention nationwide. Although violent crime in Nashville is tracking toward a 60-year low, at a September campaign event, Rep. Andy Ogles said he would “personally call the president and ask him to bring the National Guard in” in response to some of Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s policies. Trump has also deployed or considered deploying the National Guard in 12 cities, primarily in states with Democratic governors. Tennessee is something of a test case with a supportive governor in Lee.
In addition to Lee, the lawsuit also named Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and Major General Warner A. Ross III of the Tennessee National Guard as defendants.
Speaking after the hearing, Skrmetti said that between October 2024 and October 2025, murders in Memphis had been cut in half after the start of the task force. He told assembled reporters he thought Moskal gave both sides a fair chance to explain their argument.
“Potentially, it’s a pretty consequential case,” Skrmetti said. “This might be something that a governor 50 or 100 years from now is looking at.”
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.