Tennessee State Strips Memphis of Local Control

Tennessee state Sen. Brent Taylor co-sponsored a law that overturned Memphis’ limits on police traffic stops, replacing a decision by the city council with rules imposed by the state. The council had adopted its ordinance after the beating death of Black motorist Tyré Nichols. ProPublica and co-publisher MLK50: Justice Through Journalism reported that Taylor backed about half a dozen laws superseding local officials’ authority.

After pressure from Nichols’ family and community organizers, the Memphis City Council unanimously adopted the ordinance in April 2023. Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, later asked lawmakers to drop the bill that would undo it. Taylor and state Rep. John Gillespie sponsored the measure barring local governments from curbing law enforcement’s ability to conduct traffic stops.

A City’s Decision, Overruled

The ordinance barred stops for minor traffic violations, such as a broken taillight, when used as a pretext to investigate a more serious crime. Research cited in the article said such stops disproportionately targeted Black drivers, harmed trust in police and created encounters that could turn deadly.

Taylor said the ordinance made the public less safe by limiting police investigations. On the Senate floor, he said that, as a funeral-home director, he empathized with the family, but “we can’t let that empathy, Mr. Speaker, cloud our judgment in protecting 7 million Tennesseans.”

Martavius Jones, then chair of the Memphis City Council, said Taylor’s intervention suggested “that Memphis voters don’t know what their best interests are.” Jones said the city’s policy “would not jeopardize the safety of anyone — not even in Memphis, but much less the rest of the population of Tennessee.”

Republican Gov. Bill Lee said before signing the law: “I think what’s most important for us to remember is that we can give law enforcement tools, but we’ve got to hold law enforcement to a standard of using those tools appropriately, where there’s an appropriate interaction with the public.”

Eight months after the law passed, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a report finding aggressive traffic enforcement by the Memphis Police Department had harmed residents. The report recommended limiting pretextual stops and said they enabled the “regular use of excessive force with impunity” and unlawfully discriminated against Black residents. After President Donald Trump took office in 2025, his Justice Department withdrew those findings.

The State Reaches Into Prosecution

Taylor also sponsored a law transferring review of certain death-penalty cases from elected county prosecutors to the state attorney general, who is appointed by the state Supreme Court. The law applied statewide but affected Shelby County disproportionately: half of Tennessee’s 40 death-row prisoners had been prosecuted there. District Attorney Steve Mulroy said it “effectively disenfranchises the voters” who elected him.

After Trump’s 2025 deployment of the Memphis Safe Task Force, Taylor backed a law authorizing the state attorney general to review every case handled by Mulroy’s office, including cases from task-force arrests. The attorney general can report case outcomes and bail recommendations to legislative leaders, and can ask the state Supreme Court to install a temporary district attorney if Mulroy declines to prosecute certain categories of crimes.

Mulroy called that “an unelected shadow DA operating in parallel to the duly elected DA.” He said: “Prosecutorial discretion and prosecutorial independence is a key fundamental part of our criminal justice system. It’s clear under both the text of the Tennessee constitution and Tennessee Supreme Court case law, and this bill does great violence to those principles.” A second law Taylor co-sponsored requires Mulroy’s office to report certain plea deals and dismissed or reduced felony charges arising from task-force arrests to the state and the U.S. Department of Justice within 10 business days.

Mulroy sued to stop both laws, arguing they unconstitutionally singled out Shelby County and imposed an administrative burden. The lawsuit was pending in state court. He said his office prosecuted more than 40,000 defendants each year and called the reporting requirement “pointless busywork.”

Bail, Ballots and the Cost of Control

Taylor also helped end a bail calculator adopted by county officials in August 2022 after Just City and the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue over practices they said violated state law. Just City said hundreds of people were detained in Shelby County jail because they couldn’t afford bail. Under Taylor’s law, “the defendant’s ability to pay shall not be considered.” A 2025 University of Memphis study found median bail amounts increased after the law took effect.

Former Shelby County General Sessions Court Judge Bill Anderson, who retired in May 2025 after a public dispute with Taylor over bail reform, said: “That tied our hands as judges.” Anderson said the effects fell hardest on Black residents, who were more likely to have low incomes and made up a disproportionate share of Shelby County jail occupants. More than 65 people had died in the overcrowded jail since 2018.

Taylor announced his campaign for the redrawn 9th Congressional District on May 7, the day the new districts were approved. The district had been the state’s sole majority-Black district for more than four decades, largely covering Memphis; it now stretches across half the state and is majority white. Taylor was favored to win following Tennessee Republicans’ redistricting after an April U.S. Supreme Court ruling made it harder to challenge gerrymandering that dilutes the Black vote.

Taylor’s opponent, state Rep. Justin J. Pearson, advocated addressing causes of crime through schools and economic opportunity rather than focusing on incarceration. Pearson had opposed an oil pipeline through a Black Memphis neighborhood and was one of two Democratic legislators expelled by the Republican supermajority after a 2023 protest for gun control. Taylor declined an interview and did not respond to detailed questions. He said his laws prioritized public safety.