Tennessee Supreme Court Upholds State Law Reducing Size of Nashville Metro Council

The Tennessee Supreme Court on November 3, 2026, ruled against Metro Nashville, upholding the 2023 state law that caps the Metro Council at 20 members – half its current size. This is the most consequential ruling for Metro Nashville since consolidation took effect in 1963. Though the Court settled that the state can impose the cap, how Metro must comply remains unresolved. Neither the opinion nor the statute sets an implementation date, so the reduction could apply to the August 2027 elections or be delayed, potentially until 2031.

Metro faces decisions about the structure of Council seats, new district boundaries, candidate eligibility and whether Council service will become full time or remain part time. Addressing these questions may require substantial time and attention before the next election, potentially affecting the Council's capacity to consider other major initiatives. Those with business before the Council should prepare for either implementation timeline and account for possible changes in timing and priorities.

This Holland & Knight alert examines the ruling's practical implications.

How We Got Here

Nashville's Metro Council has had 40 members – 35 elected by district and five elected countywide – since consolidation of the city and county governments in 1963, making Nashville the third-largest city legislative body in the country behind those in New York City and Chicago. However, that number was born out of a deliberate political compromise. Voters rejected a 1958 charter with a 21-member council. The 1962 version of the consolidation proposal nearly doubled the size, which gave sitting city and county leaders room to keep serving without running against one another and created more opportunities for Black representation, while the satellite cities – including Belle Meade, Goodlettsville, Oak Hill and others – kept their own charters. It also kept land use close to home, with the Council holding the final say on zoning and members largely steering those decisions in their own districts.

That structure has shaped how Nashville is governed ever since and is responsible for much of the city's success over the last several decades. In a body of 40, it has been hard for any one member to stand out as a citywide leader, at least until recently, which entrenched the mayor as the lead executive and agenda setter on citywide policy.

The current fight began in August 2022, when the Council voted down a proposal to host the 2024 Republican National Convention in Nashville. The General Assembly responded in 2023 with a flurry of legislation targeting Nashville's ability to self-govern, including a law capping metropolitan councils at 20 members. Supporters framed the cap as a matter of efficiency and smaller government, and it was written to apply to every metropolitan government in Tennessee. However, in practice, Nashville was the only one over the limit.

Metro sued within days, arguing the law violated the Home Rule Amendment of the Tennessee Constitution, which limits the General Assembly's ability to impose changes on a single local government without local consent, as well as the constitution's Exemption Clause, which exempts consolidated governments such as Metro from the 25-member limit on county legislative bodies. A partial injunction kept the 2023 elections at 40 seats. A three-judge trial court then sided with Metro and struck down the cap in July 2024, but the Court of Appeals reversed that decision in June 2025, setting the stage for Metro's appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which heard arguments in February 2026.

The final turn came this April, when the General Assembly amended the law while the case was still awaiting the Supreme Court's ruling, deleting the deadlines and other language at the center of Metro's Home Rule argument. As a result, the Court never ruled on Home Rule, finding the claim moot, and leading to the November 3 decision to remand the case back to the trial court.

What the Court Decided

The Supreme Court ruled, without dissent, that the Tennessee Constitution does not prevent the General Assembly from setting its own size limit for metropolitan legislative bodies as it did in 2023 and amended in 2026. The practical result is that the Metropolitan Council must be reduced from its current 40 members to no more than 20.

After years of fighting this case, Metro's options at the state level are now nearly exhausted. It has 10 days to petition for rehearing, and the case then returns to the trial court for proceedings to continue. Mayor Freddie O'Connell said on November 3, 2026, that Metro will review its options and keep fighting for Nashville's right to govern itself. A separate federal court challenge also remains possible. Private parties, individual voters or current council members could file suit alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act or other federal protections. Metro itself would not be a party to such litigation. If a federal court were to issue an injunction, implementation could be delayed further.

When This Takes Effect

Interestingly, the opinion sets no implementation date. It is noticeably silent on the upcoming 2027 election. It simply sends the case back to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with the opinion without saying what those proceedings should cover.

The statute no longer supplies a date either. The 2026 version of this bill deleted the original provisions that made the reduction effective at the next general metropolitan election, required the Planning Commission to draw new districts within 30 days and set the Council's deadline to approve them. What survived was the 20-member cap and one implementation sentence: "the Council shall take any legislative action required by resolution, on a majority vote of those present and voting, regardless of any charter provision to the contrary." The Court added that it sees no basis for concluding that the cap cannot be enforced against Metro.

That leaves the question: Does the reduction apply to the August 2027 election? Mayor O'Connell said in September 2026 that he had a hard time imagining a ruling this late could have a material effect on the 2027 elections. The state is expected to see it differently, and the remand is a natural place for that dispute to surface, even though nothing in the opinion assigns it to the trial court.

One scenario worth watching is that Metro may accept the ruling but ask for time, seeking a court order or an agreement with the state that keeps the 40-member council in place through 2027 and makes the reduction effective with the next general metropolitan election in 2031. The practical argument is strong, since a change of this size would be very difficult to do responsibly in nine months.

However, that is far from a guarantee. The last injunction that Metro was granted rested on statutory provisions the legislature has since repealed. The state would likely oppose any delay, and the General Assembly returns in January 2027 with a demonstrated willingness to rewrite this statute in the middle of litigation. A new, hard deadline is entirely possible. Until this is resolved, companies should prepare for both outcomes: a 20-member election in August 2027 or one more 40-member term with the reduction arriving in 2031.

The Questions That Follow

Former Director of Law Wally Dietz cautioned the Council's Charter Revision Committee in January 2026 that if Metro lost, the range of implementation scenarios would be extraordinarily complex, and his successor, Director of Law Tyler Yarbro, will help steer Metro's response. Here is a rundown of the questions that will dominate Nashville's civic life in the months ahead.

How Does Implementation Actually Happen?

The statute dictates implementation be achieved via a council resolution passed by a simple majority of those present and voting, regardless of what may be outlined in the city's charter. That is a far lower bar than a charter amendment, which requires 27 votes, review by the Charter Revision Commission and a public referendum. So, the question is no longer whether a referendum is required to comply but whether Metro will want voters involved anyway. Mayor O'Connell said on November 3 that the charter should only be changed by voters, and voters soundly rejected a smaller, 27-member council in 2015 – the last time this question was posed to the public. There is also a real question about how far the resolution path reaches. It covers action required to get to 20 members, which may not include other optional structural changes the Council may want to consider to better fit a smaller legislative body.

How Many Members, and How Will the Body Be Structured?

The law caps metropolitan councils at 20, but it does not mandate exactly 20. The council could go lower. More immediately, it does not dictate the allocation between district and at-large seats. The current council has 35 district members and five at-large members who are elected countywide. When the law passed in 2023, Metro officials considered several scenarios, including 17 district and three at-large members. This council has shown considerably less appetite for at-large seats than its predecessor, which considered keeping either three or five at-large seats, so a reduction in their number or their elimination entirely is a real possibility. Another proposal that has circulated is a super-district model, a concept Memphis uses in a different configuration. Here, the county would be divided into four geographic quadrants, each served by four district council members and one super-district member elected across the quadrant. That structure would create natural geographic coalitions, preserve some institutional knowledge through a regional tier and give constituents continuity as members move from district to regional seats over time. It is one of several serious structural options the council will need to evaluate quickly.

What Do the New Districts Look Like?

Redrawing the map from 35 districts to 15, 16 or 17 will more than double the size of the average district, from roughly 20,000 constituents per member to more than 40,000. And how these lines are drawn will be a deeply political process. Every sitting council member will calculate his or her electoral survival under each proposed map. Some will be drawn into the same district as a colleague. Others will find themselves in favorable new territory. The Planning Department produced concept maps with 15 and 17 districts during the 2023 fight so this work will not start from zero, but those maps were drafted in a way to keep incumbents seeking reelection in 2023 from running against one another. With a new set of incumbents, where the district borders fall will likely look different from what was drafted in 2023.

Are Current Members Eligible to Run Under the New Maps?

The Metro Department of Law's long-standing position is that the two-term limit applies to council membership generally, not to a specific district seat. Redrawing districts would not reset the clock. Members who are term-limited remain term-limited, and about half of the current council is already in that position. But does that same rule apply if larger structural changes are implemented this time around, as in the super-district model? That guidance will almost certainly be revisited in the coming weeks.

Does This Become a Full-Time Position?

At 20 members, each representing roughly 40,000 constituents, the part-time $25,000-per-year model is almost certainly unsustainable. The case for professionalizing the council, with full-time salaries, dedicated staff per member and a meeting schedule that does not routinely run past midnight, gets considerably stronger at half the size. Whether the body should meet during business hours rather than evenings and whether that could reduce the marathon sessions that have become a fixture of the current twice-monthly meetings are practical and related questions.

Is a Separately Elected Vice Mayor Still Needed?

Under the current structure, the vice mayor is elected countywide and simply serves as the presiding officer over the council. The vice mayor is not a member of the administration and only casts a vote in the event of a tie. In a smaller, more professionalized body, some have asked whether that role should instead be selected from within the council itself, as is common in many city councils nationally. That is a charter question, and it may not be achieved through a simple council resolution.

Which Other Charter Provisions Need to Be Updated?

The Metro Charter references the current council structure in dozens of places, and each of those provisions will need to be identified and addressed. The most obvious is the foundational provision that spells out "forty members, including five at-large and thirty-five district councilmembers." But the ripple effects go well beyond that. The school board is perhaps the most complicated downstream consequence: The nine school board districts are each currently defined in the charter by groupings of specific councilmanic district numbers. Redraw the council map, and each of those definitions becomes immediately obsolete. There are also a series of vote thresholds throughout the document that are pegged to the current membership size, including a provision requiring 27 votes specifically to authorize any demolition at the state fairgrounds, supermajority requirements for overriding planning commission decisions on zoning and the basic threshold for calling a special meeting. In a 20-member body, all of those numbers have to change, and not all of them scale cleanly.

Can All of This Even Be Accomplished in Time for 2027?

Candidates need to know what they are running for well before qualifying, and the qualifying deadline will be in early May. No regular countywide election falls between now and August 2027, so any referendum held ahead of those races would likely require a special election. Meanwhile, the council will be working through budget season, the General Assembly will be in session, and the mayoral and council campaigns will already be underway. It would require the council to move with a speed and coordination it has rarely demonstrated.

The bottom line: With this decision now rendered, it is going to be nearly impossible for Metro to accomplish anything else of significant scale between now and the next election. Most other council business will operate in the shadow of this restructuring, and members facing redistricting will manage their own political futures at the same time.

How Holland & Knight Can Help

There are more questions than answers right now. Holland & Knight's Tennessee State and Local Government Advocacy Team will closely monitor developments in the process – from any rehearing petition and the trial court proceedings to the first Charter Revision Committee meeting, release of proposed district maps and 2027 election calendar – and share updates and analysis at every step. If you have any questions on how this may affect you or your organization's interests, please contact the authors or another member of the team.

Information contained in this alert is for the general education and knowledge of our readers. It is not designed to be, and should not be used as, the sole source of information when analyzing and resolving a legal problem, and it should not be substituted for legal advice, which relies on a specific factual analysis. Moreover, the laws of each jurisdiction are different and are constantly changing. This information is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship. If you have specific questions regarding a particular fact situation, we urge you to consult the authors of this publication, your Holland & Knight representative or other competent legal counsel.