IMMEDIATE RELEASE — David Tulis (423) 316-2680 davidtuliseditor@gmail.com [Link to hearing on Substack]
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Thursday, April 17, 2025 — A chancery court judge in Nashville today is reviewing competing filings on a proposed injunction to shut down what a lawsuit calls the “Eye of Sauron” run by the Tennessee Department of Revenue.
Chancellor Anne Martin at a two-hour Thursday hearing ordered the Attorney General’s office to draft an order denying a motion for injunction filed by Eagle Radio Network reporter David Tulis in Chattanooga. She also has before her Tulis’ motion to reconsider and decertify.
https://davidtulis.substack.com/p/reporter-demands-halt-to-40800-false
At a two-hour hearing attended by three attorneys serving AG Jonathan Skrmetti, Tulis argued the judge must immediately decertify the electronic insurance verification system, or EIVS, because it doesn’t use any filters in surveilling insurance company data and state registered motor vehicle owner files.
The EIVS system is used to create a list of insurance non-customers who are targeted for tag revocation. Of six million registered vehicle owners, a million don’t buy insurance. Tulis is suing Commissioner David Gerregano alleging his certification to launch the program January 2017 is no longer valid, given 28 “irregularities and breaches of law” cited in a 94-page complaint.
“EIVS lets police officers verify that a person who is required to have evidence or proof of financial responsibility has his certificate with him and that the certificate is valid — it’s supposed to be paid for up to 5 years, however long that person’s license suspension lasts,” Tulis said. “The system cannot be used to create illegally a list of non-customers and then harass those people, tow their cars and haul them to criminal court. Sauron is being used to extort the public of as much as $2 billion in coerced premiums every year in violation of law.”
Tulis is suing Gerregano and Jeff Long, safety commissioner, for their program that holds all users of the road must have insurance at all times under the Tennessee financial responsibility law of 1977. An administrative judge says that the general assembly intends to ban poor people from using the roads. On average the two commissioners gain 40,800 convictions a year under the program.
“This scam forces the poor to buy insurance they cannot afford to obtain policies that are legally insufficient to prove financial responsibility,” Tulis said. ###