A state court in Nashville on Monday heard a legal challenge by some Democratic elected officials to Donald Trump’s deployment of the national guard into the streets of Memphis, notable in part because of who has not raised an objection: the city of Memphis itself.
Shelby county’s mayor, Lee Harris, led the lawsuit, along with state representatives Gabby Salinas and GA Hardaway, both Memphis Democrats. Other state and local leaders joined the suit, including one Memphis city council member. The ACLU later filed briefs in support of the suit seeking an injunction to block the deployment of troops.
But the city government declined to fight it in court.
“We have city attorneys that have evaluated this when the dialogues began and we felt like the legal authority for the issuance of the national guard from the president and the governor was going to be something that we’re not going to be able to overcome,” Memphis mayor Paul Young told the Guardian. “Our decision was, let’s figure out how we can impact how they show up in our community.”
On 15 September, Trump signed a memo to mobilize the national guard to Memphis, a city with the fourth-highest murder rate in the United States among cities with more than 100,000 residents in 2024, a rate roughly eight times the national average. Attorneys for the state noted in court that about half of all murders in Tennessee occur in Memphis.
The mere suggestion of national guard deployment in Chicago and Portland has led to extraordinary street protest and legal challenges, which are ongoing. Unlike these cities, Memphis is deep in red-state America with a Republican governor disinclined to thwart the adventures of the president. Tennessee governor Bill Lee accepted the national guard activation and the federal spending that came with it. Though crime had been falling before the deployment in Memphis, the presence of armed troops watching Beale Street blues clubs has in relative terms been met with a shrug.
The Memphis city council has a 13-2 Democratic majority among its members. And yet, in September it rejected a resolution by a 4-4-2 tie asking Lee to refrain from deploying the national guard into the city. The council also refrained from joining the lawsuit as a group. JB Smiley Jr is the only member of the city council who joined the suit.
Tennessee’s sternly conservative state government has been chipping away at the sovereignty of its Democratic-majority municipalities over the past few years, routinely issuing threats to reduce state funding, appropriate city property or even jail wayward members of local government.
The plaintiffs argued on Monday before Patricia Head Moskal, a chancery court judge in Nashville, that the conditions in Memphis do not meet an objective standard of “civil unrest” that justifies deploying the national guard in the absence of rebellion or invasion, and certainly not without permission from the Tennessee general assembly.
Joshua M Salzman, an attorney with the Democracy Forward Foundation representing the plaintiffs, said the state is arguing that “tanks can be sent into any city in this state at any time by the governor and there is nothing for the courts to do about it, and there’s no role for the general assembly … We are all subject to the whims of the governor. That is not how American law is supposed to function.”
Democratic lawmakers argue that state statute sharply limits how the governor can use the state militia. But one argument of Lee is that the national guard is not the “militia” for legal purposes – it is the army of Tennessee, which is not subject to the restrictions of the militia. Plaintiffs call the redefinition of the guard as an “army” a semantic evasion of legal limits that has been rejected by prior courts and commentators.
The state also argues that it is not paying for the deployment – federal funds are being used – which means taxpayers are not burdened by the call-up.
The state also argues that the decision to call up the national guard is a political issue and what constitutes a “disaster” should be decided by the governor and not a court.
“This case presents a plainly political question,” said Cody Brandon, representing the Tennessee government. “Plaintiffs suggest that death and violence in Memphis is a fact of life of living there. If you live in Memphis, you might as well just used to being murdered or raped or robbed.”
He added: “The governor thought differently. And people can think differently about that. Harris might have different opinions about the gravity of a crime in Memphis. He may have different opinions – I’m sure he does – about the ways to address crime in Memphis. That’s not the sort of question that belongs in court.”
The judge appeared skeptical of this argument. “How is this question purely political?” Moskal asked Brandon. “[Lee] made that decision because of an emergency decision because of crime … this is not a policy decision. This is an operational decision, to deploy troops to Memphis, Tennessee.”
Moskal said she would render a decision after receiving written briefs.
The deployment of the national guard in Memphis is part of the Memphis Safe Task Force, which the federal administration and state leaders describe as a broader law enforcement effort to combat crime in the city. National guard troops are not allowed to make arrests, officials say. But other state and federal agencies have surged into the city over the last month, increasing arrests.
Figures from the US Marshals Service show more than 1,500 arrests since the task force began operating with the national guard on 29 September.
Young said his team is briefed every day on the activities of the task force, and has tried to focus its work on the most serious violent crimes. “We push that every morning, and we give them a list of the warrants that we want to get executed so that we can keep this task force focused on the thing that really is a challenge for Memphians,” Young said.
“The more we do that, the more influence we have. But ultimately, they don’t answer to me. They answer to the governor. They answer to the president.”
Young said he did not believe the national guard would be helpful in reducing Memphis’s violence. But people in Memphis have been looking for a solution to violence, he said.
“Given that they’re coming, I like to deal in the realities, and the reality is they were going to show up whether I want them here or not,” Young said. “I think it’s really important that the mayor of the city, the person that knows the city the best, is at the table talking to them about how they show up.”
