The Liberty Justice Center is disappointed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit’s ruling that the First Amendment does not guarantee public access to meetings of Tennessee’s Judicial Advisory Commission—a body that recommends changes to court rules. In McCaleb v. Long, the court rejected journalist Dan McCaleb’s request to attend the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Advisory Commission meetings, narrowing the First Amendment’s “experience and logic” test to adjudicatory, rather than advisory, proceedings.
“Meetings on matters of public importance should be open to the public,” said Reilly Stephens, Senior Counsel at the Liberty Justice Center. “We’re obviously disappointed that the Sixth Circuit chose to side with the public officials hiding their public duties from scrutiny, but previously open meetings cannot be removed from public view just because it’s inconvenient to those in power, and we plan to ask the Supreme Court to review this decision to make that clear once and for all.”
McCaleb, Executive Editor of The Center Square, challenged the Commission’s practice of closing meetings that were previously open as recently as 2012. In a published opinion authored by Judge John K. Bush, the Sixth Circuit held that the Commission’s meetings are “advisory, not adjudicatory,” and therefore fall outside the First Amendment access framework the court has recognized for trials and other quasi-judicial proceedings. Judge Cole concurred in the judgment.
The Liberty Justice Center represents McCaleb. The organization intends to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to restore public access to Commission meetings and clarify that governments cannot shut the doors on processes of significant public consequence merely by labeling them “advisory.”
Read the original filing in McCaleb v. Long here.