Judge Rules Against Release of Covenant School Shooter’s Writings

A Nashville judge late Thursday refused to allow the publication of writings left behind by the assailant who killed six people at a Christian school in the city last year, warning that their content could have inspired copycat violence elsewhere in the country.

In a ruling that could have far-reaching implications, the judge also sided with a more novel argument from the parents of the surviving Covenant School students: that they had obtained copyright ownership of the writings and works left behind by the assailant.

The ruling came after an emotional, monthslong legal dispute over whether officials were compelled to release the journals and other documents tied to the assailant in the March 2023 attack. At least one conservative news outlet that published leaked excerpts and was suing for the release of the writings said it would appeal.

Grieving parents, most of the families of surviving students, the school and its affiliated church had argued against facilitating unfettered access to the writings. But journalists, gun rights groups and a Republican state lawmaker sued for their release under the public records law, noting that the Tennessee General Assembly remains deeply divided over how to respond to the shooting.

“School shootings and violence have unfortunately become commonplace in our society,” the judge, Chancellor I’Ashea L. Myles of the Chancery Court in Davidson County, Tenn., said in her ruling. “Access to immediate information has also become a societal expectation which we all share.”

“However, there are occasions when this immediate access to and demand for information must be balanced and moderated to safeguard the integrity of our legal system, particularly the criminal legal system,” she said.

But while she rejected the push to disseminate the journals, drawings, art or video created by the shooter, she did not prohibit a police investigative report on the shooting from being released when it is completed, except for details about the school’s security.

Wallace Dietz, the law director for the Nashville metro area, said he expected the investigation to conclude in the coming months, though he declined to say what work remained. He confirmed that records in the investigation file — including search warrants and detectives’ notes — will be released.

The families of the three third graders and three staff members killed in the violence, as well as the parents of the surviving children, applauded the ruling.

“This opinion is an important first step to making sure the killer can’t hurt our babies anymore,” said Dr. Erin Kinney, whose 9-year-old son, Will, was killed in the shooting. “The importance is even more clear due to the leaking of stolen police documents, which has violated our parental right to protect our traumatized and grieving children from material that could destroy their lives.”

A parent of two surviving children, Nick Hansen, noted that the ruling came late on the Fourth of July, “on the heels of a stressful day of fireworks, which are so triggering for everyone.”

“This is a great day,” he added.

The police did not identify a clear motive for the shooting, though they said that the assailant, a 28-year-old former student of the school, had been receiving treatment for an emotional disorder and had “considered the actions of other mass murderers.”

Right-wing activists have focused on the shooter’s gender identity; the police have said that the assailant identified as transgender but have not concluded that was a factor in the violence. Others, including some Covenant School families, have said that the attention should instead be on tightening gun laws.

Police and city officials initially declined to release the writings, citing an ongoing investigation. Officers killed the assailant at the school within minutes of the first 911 calls.

Lawyers and First Amendment advocates argued against further weakening the state’s public records laws, especially after Covenant School families successfully lobbied for the passage of a law that limits access to autopsy records of children.

“We keep hearing this phrase, ‘We don’t want someone speaking from the grave,’” Douglas R. Pierce, a lawyer for the National Police Association, a national nonprofit supportive of gun rights, told the court in April during a two-day trial. The shooter, he added, “is not going to do anything to anyone else now, but we can learn valuable lessons from those documents.”

When photographs of three pages were leaked to a conservative political commentator last year, the excerpts showed a hateful intent to target the school and its students. (An investigation “exhausted all available investigative avenues” to find who shared the photographs, the police said, but did not identify any suspects.)

More excerpts were published in The Tennessee Star, a conservative outlet, in June. Those opposed to publishing them, however, said the leaks proved that any release would raise the prominence of the shooter, and allow the writings to spread.

Chancellor Myles said she had spent countless hours reviewing the documents in police possession, including the writings, a yearbook, clip art, medical records, maps, photos and 911 and email messages. She wrote that she was particularly troubled by not only how detailed the assailant was in planning the violence, but also how the shooter “idolized how prior terror events were conducted and implemented and the outcomes for both the victims and assailants.”

The shooter, Chancellor Myles wrote, “used the writings of other perpetrators in similar crimes to guide how this plan was constructed and accomplished, mimicking some not only in their methodology, but also choice of weapons and targets.”

The parents, school and church had pointed to the possibility of inspiring other acts of mass violence as part of the basis for their objection.

Lawyers for the families also seized on an unexpected turn last summer when the parents of the assailant, as the closest surviving relatives, signed over legal ownership of the writings to the families of surviving students. They said in court that this decision also granted them copyright ownership of the papers, an argument that proved pivotal in the case.

To “allow public inspection, display or copying of the original materials,” including the shooter’s writings, journals, art, photos and videos, Chancellor Myles wrote, “would violate and conflict with the exclusive federal rights granted to copyright owners.”

Some experts in copyright law, however, suggested that the ruling was overly broad and inadequately reflected the nuance of how the federal law is typically applied. And they expressed surprise and skepticism that the chancellor even had to wade into federal copyright law, which is not typically at issue in a lower court like hers.

Rebecca Tushnet, a professor of law at Harvard University, said, “The decision that the court made is much broader than the court thinks it is.”

“If the rule is, if something is copyrighted that overrides the public records law, then there’s basically no more public records law,” Ms. Tushnet said, adding that copyright law should not prevent someone from inspecting the records.

Those concerns are likely to be the basis of an expected appeal.

“The judge has erroneously accepted a dubious copyright claim made by intervenors who should not have been allowed to intervene in this case in the first place,” Michael Patrick Leahy, the editor in chief of The Tennessee Star and the chief executive of the outlet’s parent company, said in a statement. He added, “We will absolutely appeal.”