The Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled unanimously on Wednesday that Nashville must allow public inspection of the Covenant School shooter's writings — overturning a lower court decision that had kept the documents sealed for nearly three years.

The Daily Wire reported that the ruling, issued February 4, strips away the legal barriers that Nashville and a group of Covenant School parents had erected to block access under the Tennessee Public Records Act.

Three children and three adults were murdered on March 27, 2023, at The Covenant School, a Christian elementary school in Nashville.

The public has been fighting for answers ever since. Now, after years of legal obstruction, a court has finally said what should have been obvious from the start: public records belong to the public.

What the Court Actually Said

The appeals court's language left little room for ambiguity. The panel found that under the Tennessee Public Records Act, Nashville's only obligation is to let petitioners see the records for themselves.

"Simply put, so long as Metro maintains the records, it must allow Petitioners access … for personal inspection."

That's the court drawing a clear line between letting someone read a document and reproducing or displaying it — a distinction the lower court either missed or chose to ignore. The ruling dismantled two key arguments that had kept the writings locked away: copyright claims and school safety concerns.

Davidson County Judge I'Ashea Myles ruled in August 2024 that copyright claims — transferred from the shooter's parents to the Covenant School families — preempted public records requests entirely. The appeals court rejected that reasoning, holding that allowing someone to inspect a document is not the same as copying or distributing it.

On the school safety argument, the court was even more pointed:

"This conclusion strains credulity, and we are neither willing nor able to make the blind logical leap the Covenant Intervenors ask of us."

The court noted that many of the writings were made years before the attack — undermining the claim that releasing them would somehow endanger schools.

A "Manifesto Exemption" That Doesn't Exist

The Covenant parents and Nashville also floated what amounted to a blanket policy exception — essentially arguing that a school shooter's writings should never be released, under any circumstances. The appeals court recognized this for what it was: a policy argument dressed up as a legal one.

"Respectfully, this argument is rooted in speculation about potential future events, not facts present in the record before us. This is a policy debate not contemplated by, or anywhere mentioned in" public records law.

That's three judges telling Nashville: you don't get to invent new exemptions to transparency law because the content makes you uncomfortable. The trial court had effectively created a blanket policy exception to the TPRA barring any disclosure of a school shooter's writings — an interpretation far broader than anything the actual statute contemplates.

Metro Nashville had also denied all records requests by citing Tennessee Rule of Criminal Procedure 16, claiming the investigation was ongoing. Nearly three years after the shooter was killed by responding officers. An "ongoing investigation" with no living suspect. The appeals court was unmoved.

The Copyright Gambit

The copyright transfer deserves particular scrutiny. At some point in 2024, the shooter's parents transferred ownership of the writings to the Covenant School families — the same families who then intervened in the lawsuit to block public access. Judge Myles accepted this arrangement and ruled that federal copyright law preempted the state public records act.

Think about the mechanics of that for a moment. The parents of a mass murderer hand over the copyright to the writings of their child — the writings that might explain why six people were killed inside a Christian school — to a group that then uses that copyright to prevent anyone from reading them.

Whatever the intentions of the grieving families, the legal effect was to privatize evidence of a public atrocity. The appeals court saw through it.

Years of Stonewalling

The timeline tells its own story:

• March 2023: The attack. Nashville police immediately refuse to release the shooter's writings, citing an ongoing investigation.
• 2024: The shooter's parents transfer document ownership to Covenant families.
• August 2024: Judge Myles rules that copyright preempts public records law.
• December 2025: The FBI releases writings from the shooter — because federal litigation succeeded where state-level requests had been blocked.
• February 4, 2026: The appeals court finally overturns Myles' decision.

Portions of the writings have already been released through the FBI and through media reports. The public has seen enough to know that journal entries suggest the shooter targeted the Covenant School due to its characteristics as a Christian school. The FBI's release confirmed what many suspected — this was an attack driven by hatred of faith.

And yet Nashville fought for years to keep the public from seeing the full picture.

A Victory for Transparency

Tennessee Star publisher Michael Patrick Leahy, one of the petitioners who sued for access, did not mince words:

"This unanimous ruling by the Tennessee Court of Appeals is a major victory for freedom of the press, the people of the State of Tennessee, and The Tennessee Star."

Leahy added:

"It is in the public interest for all of these documents to be released to us expeditiously, as the Court of Appeals ruled."

Leahy was represented by the America First Legal Foundation. He was joined in the lawsuit by the Tennessee Firearms Association, The Tennessean, and the National Police Association — a coalition that spans media and Second Amendment organizations, united by a straightforward principle: the public has a right to know why six people died.

The appeals court remanded the case back to the lower court. The Covenant parents have 60 days to appeal the ruling. Whether they do will say a great deal about whether the goal is protecting children or controlling a narrative.

There is a reasonable instinct to shield grieving families from further pain. No one disputes the horror of what happened at The Covenant School. Three nine-year-old children — and three adults who gave their lives protecting them — were taken in an act of unspeakable evil. That grief is real, and it matters.

But grief does not override the law. And compassion for victims does not require hiding the motives of their killer. If anything, understanding those motives is how a society prevents the next attack. Sealing the evidence doesn't protect children. It protects the comfortable fiction that there's nothing to learn.

Six people were murdered inside a Christian school by someone who, by all available evidence, selected that target because of what it represented. For nearly three years, the city of Nashville used every legal tool at its disposal to prevent the public from understanding why. A Tennessee court just said: enough. Now release the records.