Media coalition challenges access restrictions to Memphis juvenile delinquency proceedings

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Local Legal Initiative attorney Paul McAdoo is representing a Tennessee news media coalition in a new lawsuit challenging access restrictions to certain juvenile court proceedings in Shelby County, arguing they unlawfully impede news coverage of the justice system and stifle public oversight of the court.

On behalf of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, the Daily Memphian’s publisher Memphis Fourth Estate, The Commercial Appeal’s publisher Memphis Publishing, and Memphis television station WREG’s owner and operator Nexstar Media Group, Reporters Committee attorneys are asking the Shelby County Chancery Court to block the enforcement of a policy that requires members of the press and public to obtain advance permission from the county’s juvenile court before attending delinquency hearings, which are presumptively open to the public pursuant to court rule. 

“In Tennessee, court rules are clear that juvenile delinquency proceedings should be open by default,” McAdoo said. “In Shelby County, however, the juvenile court has put in place a requirement that shuts the door on reporters who are there to attend delinquency proceedings. This unlawful policy deprives the public of timely, accurate information about how the court is handling the cases that come before it, particularly at a time when Shelby County is incarcerating more children than in recent years.”

While the rules that govern access to Tennessee’s juvenile courts allow for some types of proceedings to be closed, those rules explicitly state that delinquency cases are presumptively open to the public. The rules specify a process the court must follow in order to close a delinquency proceeding, which requires the court to, among other things, “make adequate written findings to support any order of closure” on a case-by-case basis.

Yet the Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County requires members of the press and public to seek permission up to 48 hours in advance to attend any delinquency hearing, and to specifically identify the juvenile involved. The lawsuit argues that this advance permission policy renders these proceedings presumptively closed, including when a hearing itself is not scheduled more than 48 hours in advance, or a journalist is not made aware of it within that timeframe or does not know the name of the specific juvenile involved. 

The lawsuit also details multiple instances in which reporters have been barred from accessing hearings due to the policy, either because their advance requests were not answered until after a hearing took place or because they’ve been explicitly denied. 

For example, MLK50 reporter Rebecca Cadenhead has sought access to juvenile court hearings in part to report on how the court is operating since the 2018 end of a federal oversight period that had been required by a 2012 settlement between Shelby County and the U.S. Department of Justice following a DOJ investigation concluding the Shelby County Juvenile Court discriminated against Black youth. According to the legal filings, Cadenhead has twice been prevented from observing the court’s current practices — once when her request to attend was not answered until nearly two weeks after the hearing at issue, and once when it was expressly denied — and thus has not attempted to attend a proceeding since, which she claims has posed “significant challenges” to her reporting.

This lawsuit is the most recent case in which McAdoo is helping Tennessee news organizations push for transparency in the state’s criminal justice system. 

Last month, McAdoo filed a lawsuit on behalf of a separate media coalition challenging Tennessee’s restrictions on press access to executions. Earlier this year, McAdoo also represented WBIR in a successful fight for public access to juvenile court proceedings in Meigs County, which helped Knoxville television station WBIR shed new light on the murder prosecution of a 15-year-old girl.