The long-running court fight that began over three years ago over public access to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department’s records concerning the 2023 Covenant School shooting has reached another major turning point. On August 13, 2026, the Tennessee Supreme Court denied the applications seeking permission to appeal the Tennessee Court of Appeals’ February decision. The result is that the Court of Appeals’ decision remains in place and the case now moves back toward the Davidson County Chancery Court for implementation of that ruling.
How the Public Records Dispute Began
On March 27, 2023, a shooter entered The Covenant School in Nashville and killed six people before being killed by responding Metropolitan Nashville police officers inside the school. In the weeks that followed, Tennessee Firearms Association and retired Sheriff James Hammond made Tennessee Public Records Act requests seeking records held by MNPD concerning the shooting and the resulting investigation, including writings recovered during that investigation. TFA and Hammond, with support from Judicial Watch, were among several requesters who ultimately went to court shortly after Metro refused to provide the requested records.
Metro initially relied heavily on Tennessee Rule of Criminal Procedure 16 and its position that the police investigation remained active. That position became a central issue because the shooter was dead, there was suggestion of another person of interest and the requesters disputed whether an investigation into a deceased person could support continued secrecy when there was no pending or contemplated criminal prosecution against someone who could be prosecuted. Metro maintained that its investigation had not concluded, while the requesters argued that an “ongoing investigation” could not become an indefinite basis for withholding otherwise public records.
The litigation soon became more complicated. The Covenant School, Covenant Presbyterian Church, and parents of Covenant School students were permitted to intervene and assert additional objections to disclosure. The public-records petitioners appealed the intervention ruling. In November 2023, the Court of Appeals upheld the intervention order, allowing those parties to remain in the case and assert their interests as the public-records litigation proceeded.
The chancery court eventually conducted a two-day merits hearing in April 2024. In its final order entered in July 2024, the trial court concluded that the MNPD investigative file was effectively exempt from disclosure, relying on several theories that included the continuing criminal investigation, Tennessee’s statutory protection for certain school-security information, and federal copyright law as applied to writings and other works attributed to the shooter. The trial court did reject arguments that Tennessee’s constitutional and statutory victims’ rights provisions independently barred disclosure, but its other rulings prevented TFA and the other requesters from obtaining the records they sought.
The Court of Appeals Rejected the Broad Secrecy Arguments
TFA and the other public-records petitioners appealed the trial court’s ruling. The Tennessee Court of Appeals heard argument in October 2025. On February 4, 2026, a unanimous three-judge panel issued an extensive opinion that affirmed the trial court on only limited issues and reversed it on most of the issues that had prevented public access to the records.
One of the Court of Appeals’ most important conclusions was that the MNPD investigative file consists of public records because the records were collected and maintained by Metro in the course of official government business. By the time of the appeal, Metro acknowledged that the investigation had closed and that there was no pending or contemplated prosecution, while the appellate court noted that there was no indication the shooter had acted in concert with another person. The court therefore treated the Rule 16 issue ( Metro’s claim of a pending criminal investigation) as moot and directed that materials being withheld solely on that basis be made available for inspection.
The Court of Appeals also rejected the trial court’s sweeping application of Tennessee’s school-security exception. The appellate court agreed that genuinely sensitive school-security information can remain protected, even when the records concern a private school and have become public records through Metro’s possession, but it held that the statute could not be stretched into a blanket exemption for years of writings and other materials merely because some portion of those materials might relate to school security. The court directed the chancery court to identify information that actually falls within the statutory exception and to redact that information rather than withholding entire records simply because some protected information appears within them.
That part of the decision was especially significant because the Court of Appeals declined to create a new judicial exception based on concerns that publication of a school shooter’s writings might encourage copycat conduct. The court recognized the seriousness of those policy concerns but concluded that creation of a broader exemption of that kind is a matter for the General Assembly or, where appropriate, the Tennessee Supreme Court—not something a trial court may add to the Public Records Act on its own.
The Court of Appeals likewise rejected the argument that federal copyright law makes the writings completely unavailable under the Tennessee Public Records Act. Although the Court of Appeals agreed that the parents had standing to raise possible copyright issues, it held that allowing a requester to personally inspect a public record does not require Metro itself to reproduce, distribute, display, or publish the copyrighted work in a manner that creates a blanket conflict between the Public Records Act and federal copyright law. The Court of Appeals deliberately left questions involving copying, reproduction, or later publication for another day, noting that any actual infringement claim could be addressed under federal copyright law if and when such a claim arises.
Finally, the Court of Appeals agreed with the trial court that Tennessee’s constitutional and statutory provisions concerning victims’ rights do not themselves create an exemption from the Public Records Act under the circumstances presented in this case. Taken together, the rulings eliminated the principal theories that had been used to justify wholesale withholding of the MNPD file and required a much narrower, record-specific examination of any remaining claimed exemptions.
What the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Action Means
Metro, The Covenant School, and the parents of Covenant School students then filed applications asking the Tennessee Supreme Court to permit another appeal. Tennessee Rule of Appellate Procedure 11 makes Supreme Court review of a Court of Appeals decision discretionary, rather than automatic, and the Supreme Court may accept a case when, among other considerations, it presents an important question of law or a need for uniformity in Tennessee law.
The Supreme Court denied those applications on August 13, 2026. It is important to describe that action accurately: a denial of permission to appeal is not a written Supreme Court decision approving every statement or legal conclusion in the Court of Appeals’ opinion, and the denial itself does not decide the issues anew. What it does mean is that the Supreme Court declined to disturb the Court of Appeals’ judgment, leaving that judgment in force in this litigation.
The procedural significance became even clearer on August 17, when the appellate docket recorded issuance of the mandate. Under Tennessee’s appellate rules, an application for Supreme Court review stays issuance of the Court of Appeals’ mandate, but the mandate issues when the Supreme Court denies permission to appeal. With that appellate process now completed, the focus shifts from whether the Court of Appeals’ ruling will survive Supreme Court review to how the chancery court and Metro will carry out the Court of Appeals’ ruling on remand.
What Is Likely to Happen Next
The case should now return to Davidson County Chancery Court for proceedings consistent with the Court of Appeals’ instructions.
The Court of Appeals gave fairly specific directions about what the process in the trial court must accomplish. Records withheld only because of the former criminal investigation are to be made available, while records containing information that actually qualifies for the school-security exemption must be reviewed and appropriately redacted rather than withheld in their entirety. The appellate court also expressly encouraged the chancery court to proceed as expeditiously as possible, noting that the public-records litigation had already been pending for nearly three years when the February 2026 opinion was issued.
That does not necessarily mean that every dispute has ended. The parties could still disagree about which particular passages or documents contain protected school-security information, how Metro will conduct inspection of the records, what redactions are justified, and whether a requester who seeks to copy or later publish copyrighted material faces separate issues under federal copyright law. Those questions are materially narrower than the original dispute, however, because the Court of Appeals rejected the theories that permitted Metro and the intervenors to treat essentially the entire investigative file as unavailable to the public.
Future trial-court rulings concerning particular exemptions or the implementation of the mandate could generate additional litigation or another appeal if a party believes the chancery court has not followed the appellate court’s instructions. But Metro can no longer rely on the now-closed criminal investigation as a blanket basis for withholding the requested records, and the school-security and copyright theories cannot be applied in the sweeping manner accepted by the trial court in 2024. Those are the operative conclusions that will govern the next stage of this case unless some later court order or change in governing law alters the legal landscape.
For TFA and its members, the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case marks an important milestone in a public-records fight that began shortly after the Covenant School tragedy. TFA’s position has been that government records should be produced according to the Tennessee Public Records Act and that exemptions created by law should be applied as written, rather than expanded to create broad categories of secrecy that the General Assembly did not enact. The next phase will show how quickly Metro and the chancery court implement the Court of Appeals’ directives and how much of the long-requested investigative record will finally become available for public inspection.
