Tag: tennesee

Tennessee Woman’s ‘Fuck Em’ Both 2024′ Sign Is Protected Speech, Rules District Court

A federal judge has ruled a Tennessee woman can’t be fined for saying what we’re all thinking, even if it’s in the form of a yard sign.

This past week, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee ruled that the town of Lakeland, Tennessee, violated resident Julie Pereira’s First Amendment rights when it fined her for placing a “Fuck Em’ [sic] Both 2024″ sign in her yard.

According to her First Amendment lawsuit filed last month, Pereira’s sign “simply and cogently” expressed her own opinion that neither major party candidate was an acceptable choice for president. A Lakeland code enforcement official disagreed, slapping Pereira with daily fines of $50 for violating the city’s prohibition on “obscene” signs.

The city only stopped fining Pereira after she covered the u on her sign with tape. By that point, she’d wracked up $688 in fines and other fees because of her sign.

But, unwilling to either pay those fees or dilute the “potency” of her message, Pereira sued the city of Lakeland for violating her First Amendment rights.

“In the interest of protecting not only my rights, but all citizens in the state of Tennessee this case has been taken to the next level because of its constitutional impacts,” she wrote on Facebook, per the New York Post‘s reporting.

In a brief, three-page ruling, the U.S. district court agreed with Pereira. The court barred the city from taking any further enforcement action over her sign and instructed the city to reimburse Pereira for the fines she’d paid, plus $31,000 in attorneys fees, and $1 in nominal damages for having her constitutional rights violated.

Keep reading

Federal Appeals Court Rules That ‘Transgender’ Tennesseans Can’t Change Sex on Birth Certificate

In a win for common sense, a federal appeals court sided with Tennessee on Friday, concluding that the state’s law saying that so-called “transgender” individuals cannot change their gender on their birth certificates is not unconstitutional.

The Daily Wire reported that in a 2-1 decision, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found that Tennessee law saying that birth certificates need to coincide with biological sex is not in violation of the 14th Amendment.

Tennessee had been sued by four men who believed they were women who wanted to change their gender on their birth certificates to female.

“But absent an existing fundamental right, the Constitution does not require the States to embrace the plaintiffs’ view of what information a birth certificate must record,” Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote.

Keep reading

56 years after death, Tennessee folk hero Buford Pusser’s wife Pauline Pusser exhumed

Pauline Pusser has been dead for 56 years without a suspect in the case.

On Thursday, authorities exhumed her body, the wife of hard-charging sheriff Buford Pusser, who became known as a folk hero after his death in Tennessee.

Pauline was shot to death in an ambush presumably meant to kill her husband.

An overcast day accompanied by whistling winds blew a foul stench through the cemetery in Adamsville, a small town around 100 miles east of Memphis, after the departure of Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents, which oversaw the exhumation of the body on Thursday.

Disturbed dirt rests in front of her grave, adjacent to her husband’s headstone that reads “He Walked Tall.”

A recent tip prompted a review of the case, TBI said, and they discovered that an autopsy was never done after Pauline Pusser’s death on Aug. 12, 1967.

“With the support of Pauline’s family and in consultation with the 25th Judicial District Attorney General Mark Davidson, TBI requested the exhumation in an attempt to answer critical questions and provide crucial information that may assist in identifying the person or persons responsible for Pauline Pusser’s death,” TBI said.

Keep reading