NASHVILLE – John Jay Hooker has filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking the appointment of successors to three appeals court judges who plan to retire Aug. 31, 2014, contending move will wrongfully deny voters the right to make choices in the Aug. 7, 2014, election.
“They have created a situation so there will be no election for their seats,” said Hooker, 82, a lawyer and past candidate for multiple political offices who has waged a series of legal battles against the state’s judicial selection system. “The state Constitution requires that there be an election… They are unconstitutionally calling off an election.”
The state’s Judicial Nominating Commission, which will cease to exist at the end of this month, has announced plans to select nominees to fill the three appeal court seats before then and send them to Gov. Bill Haslam.
Those announcing plans to retire effective Aug. 31, 2014, are Court of Appeals Judge Patricia Cottrell of Nashville, Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Joseph Tipton of Knoxville and Court of Appeals Judge Alan Highers of Memphis. The commission plans hearings June 27, 28 and 29 to select nominees.
Haslam intends to accept the nominations and make the appointments after “an appropriate amount of time” to review the nominees and make a decision, according to a gubernatorial spokesman.
Hooker’s lawsuit, filed in Davidson County Circuit Court, names Haslam, Tom Lawless, chairman of the Judicial Nominating Commission, and state Attorney General Bob Cooper as defendants. The lawsuit seeks an injunction against the commission submitting nominees and the governor acting on them.
Hooker said proceedings in the case will be before Circuit Court Judge Hamilton Gayden, who also presided over a separate recent Hooker lawsuit – one of several filed over the years – that challenged to system for selecting judges of the state Supreme Court and appeals courts.
Gayden ruled against Hooker on most points in that lawsuit, but found he was correct in one assertion – that the Court of Appeals and Court of Criminal Appeals judges should be assigned districts for election rather than be elected in a statewide vote.
A specially appointed state Supreme Court will hear arguments July 19 on that case. The state’s sitting Supreme Court justices all recused themselves from hearing the case.
No hearing has been scheduled yet in the new Hooker lawsuit. A spokeswoman for Cooper said the attorney general’s office had not served with a copy of the lawsuit Wednesday and would have no comment.
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Note: Hooker filed a copy of this story, which appeared earlier in the News Sentinel and this blog, as an exhibit in his new lawsuit.