Charlane Oliver Sues Over Special Session Protest Punishments

State Sen. Charlane Oliver (D-Nashville) is suing Lt. Gov. Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) and other Senate officials months after she was punished for leading a protest on the Senate floor during this year's special legislative session redrawing the state's congressional map.

During a vote on the legislation, Oliver stood on her desk in the Senate chamber and unfurled a sheet reading “No Jim Crow 2.0” and “Stop the TN Steal.” Meanwhile, other Democratic senators stood in the chamber’s well in protest as the redrawn map split Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District in Memphis into three districts, effectively gerrymandering what was then the state’s only majority-Black district.

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Days later, Oliver was punished by being reassigned from the Senate Government Operations Committee to the Senate State and Local Government Committee, stripped of her per diem pay outside of regular legislative sessions, and denied any reimbursement for out-of-state legislative travel.

In August, Oliver made public a July letter to McNally demanding to have “all punitive measures” rescinded. She has now filed a federal lawsuit in the Middle District of Tennessee alleging that McNally retaliated against Oliver and infringed on her First Amendment rights and the 14th Amendment rights of her constituents, as well as allegedly violating the Tennessee State Constitution.

In addition to McNally, the Senate’s chief clerk Russell Humphrey and the director of legislative administration for the Tennessee General Assembly, Krista Lee Carsner, are also listed as defendants, as Oliver’s opposition to the redistricting bill was not officially recorded in the Senate record.

“To retaliate against Senator Oliver’s protected speech, Speaker McNally and Chief Clerk Humphrey punished her in ways that have infringed her freedom of expression, interfered with her ability to perform her elected duties, and denied her the privileges of the office to which she was duly elected,” the complaint reads. “Most directly, Chief Clerk Humphrey prevented Senator Oliver from doing her job by refusing to allow her to vote on legislation of utmost importance to her constituents. … The failure to count Senator Oliver’s vote added insult to the injury of disenfranchisement wrought by the gerrymandered congressional map.”

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McNally’s office was not immediately available for comment on the lawsuit. But in August, McNally’s communications director Adam Kleinheider told Scene sister publication Williamson Scene, “At every stage, Sen. Oliver had opportunities to fulfill her responsibilities as a senator. Instead, she chose to prioritize a political performance over the duties of her office.” Kleinheider called her protest an “immature, aberrant and disrespectful display” and the punishments of those actions “measured, appropriate and entirely legal."

The lawsuit seeks to have a judge declare that McNally and Humphrey violated the rights of Oliver and her constituents, and order Humphrey to amend the Senate’s record of Oliver’s no vote. 

The suit also aims to order McNally to rescind the punishments against Oliver, prevent further punishments related to her special session actions, and issue reimbursements for expenses that she has been denied as part of the punishment — as well as being awarded any unspecified compensatory and punitive damages to Oliver that a judge may determine appropriate.

Oliver filed the lawsuit alongside constituents and is represented by Barrett Johnston Martin & Garrison lawyer Scott Tift in Nashville as well as the Campaign Legal Center and Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection out of Washington D.C.

This article was first published by our sister publication, the Nashville Post.