A lawsuit filed by the Sumner County Election Commission against the county's mayor and its governing body will be allowed to continue, a chancellor ruled Wednesday.
The lawsuit was filed in May after members of the Sumner County Commission sought to evict election officials from their offices and warehouse space used to store voting machines — potentially leaving machines unsecured and out of easy reach of election officials who need ready access to them.
The eviction plans came as election officials were expecting a shipment of next-generation voting machines requiring larger, secure storage and just as they were preparing for upcoming elections. The lawsuit suggested county officials' efforts "threaten the integrity of the 2024 election before a single vote has been cast."
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In denying the County Commission and mayor's motion to dismiss the case, Chancery Court Judge Louis Oliver III also admonished their attorney over the County Commission's public efforts to embarrass Lori Atchley, the elections administrator, while she is a litigant in a case against them.
Atchley, a Republican who has held the job since 2011, was the subject of a resolution enacted by the commission Monday that calls for the General Assembly to take a vote of no-confidence against her then remove her from office.
Sumner County Administrator of Elections Lori Atchley presents her department's proposed budget during a County Commission budget committee meeting May 4 in Gallatin, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)The Election Commission's move to larger county-owned space was approved in 2019 by the previous mayor. A majority of the County Commission was newly elected in August. All of the new commissioners were backed by the conservative "Constitutional Republicans" political movement in Sumner County that seeks to disrupt business-as-usual and bring more conservative and Christian values to local governance.
Many of the Constitutional Republican-backed commissioners were antagonistic to former Mayor Anthony Holt.
Members of the County Commission earlier this year concluded it was they, not the mayor, who had the authority to approve allocation of county facilities' uses.
Tom Lee, the attorney representing the Election Commission, on Tuesday called the Sumner County Chancery Court judge's ruling "the right decision" in a dispute centered on a legal issue of which county officials have the authority to approve building space uses.
A temporary order barring the Election Commission's eviction, issued by the judge in May, remains in place while the case continues, Lee said.
The court's decision comes a day after the County Commission voted in favor of a resolution accusing Atchley, of among other things, "moral turpitude."
Hendersonville police have arrested Atchley — who has no prior criminal record — twice on separate misdemeanor charges in the weeks since the Election Commission's lawsuit was filed against the county's leadership.
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Atchley was booked into a Sumner County Jail on May 15 on a misdemeanor theft charge after a tenant she was in the process of evicting accused her of stealing a trailer, an offense that gives police the latitude to issue a citation in lieu of arrest.
On June 20, she was again arrested by Hendersonville police on allegations of domestic abuse involving her husband, according to Hendersonville police. Atchley's husband suffers from dementia, according to two individuals familiar with the family. Atchley told police she was trying to prevent her husband from calling 911 for nonemergency reasons, according to a police report of the incident.
Atchley voluntarily took a leave of absence from the Elections Commission on June 21.
Read more at TennesseeLookout.com.