NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The release of arrest records could harm suspects who are ultimately exonerated, a Vanderbilt law professor argued in federal court yesterday.

James Blumstein told U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger that the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department violates a 1974 court decree every time it releases information about arrests in which the suspect has not been convicted. He is asking Trauger to enforce that order and prohibit police from releasing arrest records.

“Metro can’t just renounce its agreement,” Blumstein, a constitutional law professor, told Trauger, one his former students.

Allison Bussell, an attorney for Nashville’s metropolitan government, argued that the court order is essentially moot because it seeks to protect a civil right that doesn’t actually exist.

The 1974 decree was one of two orders stemming from the settlement of a lawsuit filed on behalf of a “John Doe,” who claimed that information made public about his arrest hurt his opportunity for employment by Nashville metropolitan government, even though he was later cleared of the charges.

Blumstein, who represented “John Doe” and others potentially harmed in the class-action suit, is the only party involved in the original proceedings of the case who is still involved today.

The Nashville metropolitan government, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, The Tennessean newspaper and WTVF-TV in Nashville have asked Trauger to vacate the order.

Alan Johnson, an attorney representing The Tennessean, said the decree seeks to offer privacy to a suspect but that the Constitution does not protect a person’s privacy in an arrest, a position upheld in a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision.

“Now I take a rather simplistic view, but it seems to me when the Court said that, it took away any constitutional right the plaintiff is asserting,” he said.

Blumstein said the defendants should have made that argument in court following 1976 ruling.

Arrest records become public as part of court records when an arrest warrant is issued or charges are brought to court. To effectively protect a suspect’s identity, court records would also have to be sealed, a solution that would be much too broad and against the spirit of open government, Bussell said.

“It’s the metropolitan government’s position that a decree should be vacated when it serves no purpose,” she said.

Neither party denied that the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department — the only agency covered in the court decree — regularly releases information about arrests to the public. Bussell said Nashville police weren’t even aware that the court decrees existed.

Blumstein said that since the court decree was issued in 1974, he’s never had reason to believe police were not following the order. That changed when The Tennessean reported that Nashville police were posting photographs and names of people accused of, though not necessarily convicted of, engaging in prostitution on a Web site.

Trauger did not indicate when she would issue her decision in the case, but has required the parties to return to court in 30 days to discuss the other decree involved in the “John Doe” case. That decree required police to update arrest records with how the charges are resolved and prevented Nashville metropolitan government from asking a person seeking employment if they had ever been arrested.