The Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee filed a new lawsuit against the State of Tennessee in a challenge to Public Chapter No. 471 – a law that requires online auctioneers to be licensed.
The Beacon Center filed the lawsuit on behalf of Will McLemore (pictured below), founder of McLemore Auction Company, and other online auctioneers.
Under current law, any person who acts as or advertises as an auctioneer, affiliate auctioneer, or bid caller is required to be licensed by the Tennessee Auctioneer Commission. Under Public Chapter No. 471, Tennessee’s auctioneering licensing laws were extended to include online auctions, with exceptions for large online auction sites, including Ebay.
The updated law to include online auctions, according to the think tank, “threatens the livelihoods of Will, his employees, and other online auctioneers across the state, many of whom have been operating safely for years without having to obtain a license.”
The Beacon Center said it filed the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds because “speaking is an essential part of auctioneering, and the government must be able to justify laws that restrict speech.”
“We filed this lawsuit because countless Americans, from web designers to tour guides to authors, make their living by speaking,” the think tank said. “The right to earn a living is fundamental. The fact is that this law is arbitrary, unfair, and quite frankly unconstitutional. Professional speech is not any less worthy of First Amendment protection merely because the speaker is earning a living in the process.”
The free-market think tank originally filed a lawsuit against the law before it was scheduled to take effect in 2019, as previously reported by The Tennessee Star. However, after the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee granted permanent injunctive relief to Plaintiffs on May 3, 2022, the State appealed the District Court’s Order to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Sixth Circuit ended up reversing and dismissing the Plaintiffs’ claims for lack of jurisdiction.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
