The State of Tennessee conceded on the front end that Hurley has evidently moved back into her correct district after living outside of the district for over a year, but contended the initial move was intended to be permanent in nature. By being permanent in nature, ADA Jason Collver argued that her seat was vacated upon the initial move. The evidence showed that Hurley did not realize the Yellowstone address was outside of her district until, by her own testimony she said she had over 100 calls in one day after many people saw a Facebook post of a video she made from the 406 W. 5th Ave. home inside her district talking about the move to the Yellowstone Drive house and that the 5th Ave. home was up for sale.

There was testimony that Hurley received advice to claim the move was temporary. Hurley and her attorney argued, contrary to the State’s and other’s viewing of the Facebook post, Youtube Video, that the move was always intended to be temporary and that Yellowstone house was merely an investment property.

Chancellor Williams found that he viewed the Facebook post like many other of Hurley’s sometimes multiple daily video posts as more self promotion of her real estate business. Chancellor stated the current state of the law is that temporary moves are based entirely on the intent of the person and Hurley testified that her intent was to make the move temporary, so coupled with the fact that she is now living back in the district, the issue of the June 2019 move outside the district is now moot and dismissed the quo warranto lawsuit.

District Attorney General Russell Johnson stated that, “with this interpretation of the law, it makes it nearly impossible to ‘police’ any elected official moving outside of their political jurisdiction if they claim the move is temporary, regardless of the length of the move. This begs a legislative ‘fix’ if the public wants to make sure their elected officials truly ‘reside’ in the district they represent.”