An apparent act of judicial interference from state Election Coordinator Mark Goins has drawn alarm and disdain from the two Memphis lawyers who last year successfully sought to expand mail-in voting in Tennessee.
Their efforts resulted in a positive ruling from a Nashville chancellor on adding pandemic fear as a legal reason for voters to seek mail-in ballots.
It was revealed in the Tennessean this week that Goins had seemingly been on the drafting end of a would-be legislative effort to oust the judge who made that ruling, Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle.
The ouster resolution, from state Rep. Tim Rudd (R-Murfreesboro), was backed by a majority of Republicans in the state House and had at least nominal sponsorship in the state Senate as well, but, after kicking up a groundswell of outrage from the state’s legal community, was rejected last week by the House Civil Justice Subcommittee.
University of Memphis law professor and former County Commissioner Steve Mulroy responded that the bill, HR 23, “was an assault on judicial independence.”
Said Mulroy: “It sought to remove a democratically elected judge for a single decision holding a statute unconstitutional as applied to once-in-a-century circumstances, even though the bulk of the relief she ordered ended up being ordered by the Tennessee Supreme Court. That is bad enough. But to find out that the executive branch was actively cooperating with legislators on this assault is even more concerning, if you care about the separation of powers.”
And lawyer Jake Brown, who, along with Mulroy, had pleaded the case for expanding mail-in accessibility on behalf of Up with the Vote 901, said, “Coordinator Goins is an attorney and knows better. Wherever the initial impulse for the ridiculous resolution originated, it was below the dignity of Goins’ office and law license to have played any active role in that name-calling nonsense. You don’t publicly question a sitting judge’s ethics because she ruled against you. The question is where this memo falls on the line between bad faith and whining.”
Rep. Rudd has acknowledged that a Goins memo that provided the underlying reasoning and some of the language employed in his ouster resolution had been supplied by the Election Coordinator. Rudd said Goins had responded to his own request for information about legal implications of the mail-in issue.
Much of what Goins offered to Rudd was consistent with arguments made by him and the office of Secretary of State Tre Hargett last year in appeals of Lyle’s ruling, which was partially rolled back by the state Supreme Court. The Court did, however, sanction legitimate anxiety concerning COVID-19 as a factor to be taken into account for applicants with underlying health problems or the caretakers of such applicants.
Lyle’s initial ruling, in June, had been that the coronavirus pandemic, in and of itself, was sufficient reason for voters to seek mail-in ballots, which otherwise were available only via certain limited and long-established conventional justifications. At one point, when state officials dragged their feet on complying with her order, the judge had said “shame on you” and threatened them with legal penalties.
