A Tennessee woman named Alexis Luttrell recently reached a settlement in her First Amendment lawsuit against Germantown, Tennessee. Germantown tried to give her a citation for keeping up her Halloween skeletons for longer than usual. The city has agreed to pay Luttrell $24,999 to end the lawsuit. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit organization that supports free speech rights, helped Luttrell with her case.
Luttrell initially displayed an 8-foot skeleton and a skeleton dog for Halloween. Instead of taking them down after the holiday, she decided to use them in her Election Day and Christmas decorations. The city of Germantown wasn’t too happy about this and charged her with violating an ordinance that limited the time period for holiday decorations. According to the ordinance, decorations could only be up 45 days before the holiday and had to be taken down within 30 days after. Luttrell, a law school graduate working in healthcare compliance, found herself in a sticky situation.
The charges against Luttrell were dropped by Germantown in March, and on April 28, the city got rid of the holiday decorations ordinance altogether. Luttrell expressed her relief in a press release, stating that she no longer had to worry about fines for her skeletons. She plans to keep dressing them up in different outfits for various holidays like Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Pride Month, and Juneteenth. It seems like her skeletons have become quite the celebrities in the neighborhood!
