TN Supreme Court denies Wanda Halbert’s request to appeal in ouster case
Gabriel Huff
This came after the Tennessee Court of Appeals overruled a dismissal of Halbert’s ouster proceedings in October 2025, allowing the case to move forward in court.
MEMPHIS, Tennessee — The Tennessee Supreme Court rejected Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert’s request to appeal in the ouster case pending against her on Monday, March 31, as a legal battle continues.
This came after the Tennessee Court of Appeals overruled a dismissal of Halbert’s ouster proceedings in October 2025, allowing the case to move forward in court. Halbert then asked the state supreme court to look into dismissing her case, but the court denied her request.
The ouster proceedings will now go back to trial court. However, Halbert only has a few months left in office, creating uncertainty in the case’s future.
Halbert’s defense attorney, Darrell O’Neal, reiterated the dilemma.
“Depending on the County attorney’s office, this matter now has to go back to the Trial Court for it to rule on the issue of whether this matter should be dismissed because the private law firm lacked standing to bring extraordinary litigation without the Commission’s approval,” O’Neal said. “However, it is unclear where this case goes because Ms. Halbert has less than 5 months left in office.”
County attorneys denied to make a comment about the pending litigation.
The case is the second attempt by Shelby County at removing Halbert from office and was dismissed in November 2024. Both of the cases trying to remove Halbert were dismissed due to lack of jurisdictional standing over the filing of the suit.
The Shelby County judge who originally dismissed the case previously said she didn’t see how the case could go forward due to the wording of the statutes.
In her 2024 ruling, the judge said the state’s statute clearly said that it had to be Shelby County Attorney Marlinee Iverson who would file the lawsuit and conduct the investigation.
However, Iverson herself said she had a conflict of interest since she represented Halbert. The task was then passed on to Chief Litigation Attorney Lee Whitwell, who then hired Robert Meyers to handle the case.
The appeals court agreed with Iverson’s reasoning and released the following judgement:
“In sum, we conclude that Appellant does not lack statutory standing under the ouster statutes to prosecute an ouster complaint simply because a conflict of interest required delegation of this matter to a Deputy County Attorney. This case was properly brought by the County Attorney’s office under County Attorney Iverson’s title. As such, the trial court’s order dismissing this appeal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction is reversed.”
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