Two years ago, I wrote that Jonathan Skrmetti, my friend and law school classmate, was the best pick for attorney general of Tennessee. He would assume that role on September 1, 2022. Two years in, it is worth looking at what he has accomplished. His record demonstrates how a truly talented person serving as attorney general can almost singlehandedly change the trajectory of national issues.
Republican attorneys general have been front and center in the biggest policy fights in recent years, from checking federal overreach under the Biden administration to defending commonsense state laws against attacks from liberal interest groups—not to mention protecting citizens from the virtue-signaling legal infractions of woke companies that kowtow to liberal activists. On each of these fronts, Attorney General Skrmetti has stepped to the forefront, fought the right fights, and scored momentous victories.
Biden Administration Overreach
Skrmetti secured a preliminary injunction against the Biden administration’s sweeping Title IX regulations that mandate, among other things, that biological boys be allowed to play girls’ sports and use girls’ facilities in schools. Both the Sixth Circuit and (just last month) the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stay the injunction. In another case in which he challenged the Health and Human Services rule requiring states and other insurers to cover gender-transition procedures, including for children who may suffer irreversible harm, Skrmetti won a preliminary nationwide injunction.
Other fights against executive branch agencies are ongoing but offer promising relief on several fronts. Skrmetti has sued the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) over its recent rewrite of Pregnant Workers Fairness Act regulations to require employers to support elective abortions, including those that are illegal under state law. Another suit challenges the Department of Homeland Security’s refusal to turn over records about its plan to release detained illegal immigrants, many of whom have dangerous criminal histories, into Tennessee.
Skrmetti has also been on the front lines filing comments on behalf of consumers in an effort to curtail the Department of Energy’s “war on household appliances.” The department is proposing draconian measures purporting to minimize water and energy consumption, but as the attorney general has noted, “The administration is looking to regulate popular and necessary models of everyday household appliances—cooktops, refrigerators, freezers, dishwashers, clothes washers, you name it—out of existence.” The attorney general has also taken the lead in multistate comment letters to the EEOC opposing proposed rules that would force private employers to adopt radical gender ideology–based practices in the workplace and to the Department of the Treasury warning against tainting artificial intelligence development by imposing the administration’s ideological agenda on financial transactions.
Protecting Tennessee and Tennesseans
When the NCAA came after Tennessee’s flagship state school over alleged violations of a ban on student athletes negotiating with third parties regarding name, image, and likeness compensation, Skrmetti filed suit on behalf of students. He prevailed as the district court concluded that the NCAA was likely in violation of antitrust laws, harming student athletes, and issued a preliminary injunction barring the organization from enforcing its policy.
Skrmetti has also been successful defending laws that were passed by the state legislature from activists who have advanced some of the Left’s favorite legal arguments. The Biden Department of Justice supported an attack—based unconvincingly on the Fourteenth Amendment—on Tennessee’s prohibition of puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and sex-change surgery for children. Skrmetti prevailed in the Sixth Circuit, and the case will be argued in the U.S. Supreme Court during its upcoming term. The attorney general also was successful in the Sixth Circuit defending Tennessee’s policy against changing the sex listed on birth certificates.
Taking on Woke Companies
Skrmetti filed the nation’s first consumer protection action against BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, over conflicting and misleading statements to consumers about its use of ESG in its investment strategies. On another front, following a lengthy investigation that began in 2022, the attorney general is leading a bipartisan antitrust action, alongside the U.S. Department of Justice and a majority of states, against notoriously woke Ticketmaster and Live Nation Entertainment, its owner, alleging their illegal monopoly of the live entertainment industry. He has gone to court to take on the predatory conduct of Instagram/Meta and TikTok. And in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision last year in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, Skrmetti co-led a letter signed by attorneys general of thirteen states warning Fortune 100 companies about DEI practices that use racial preferences in hiring and other decisions. In a similar letter to the American Bar Association on behalf of twenty-one states, Skrmetti warned about law school accreditation polices that require the use of race-based admissions and hiring.
Over a short span of time, this work has helped reshape national issues and establish the attorney general’s office as a force to be reckoned with by federal bureaucrats, left-wing activists, woke companies, and others who would bring harm to Tennesseans. Of course, the office’s work would not be possible without the stellar staff that Skrmetti built. He has recruited a dream team of former Supreme Court clerks and other top talent, including Matt Rice as solicitor general and Whitney Hermandorfer as director of the strategic litigation unit of the attorney general’s office.
Attorney General Skrmetti has six more years in office, and he has gotten off to a great start. If the Tennessee legislature continues to give him the resources to recruit and deploy top talent, the sky is the limit for what he can accomplish.