The Tennessee Supreme Court, which appoints the state attorney general, is likely to appoint a new one this year via a public application and hearing process in a similar manner to the one it used in 2014 to appoint Attorney General Herbert Slatery.
Slatery, who has been Tennessee’s attorney general since 2014, is not seeking an additional eight-year term.
Read the full story
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery’s office ignored two requests for comment when The Tennessee Star reached out after several of his counterparts in other states exited the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG).
The Attorneys General of Texas, Montana, and Missouri announced in a letter to the president of the NAAG, Iowa Attorney General Thomas Miller (D), that they were exiting the organization due to its left-wing bias.
Read the full story
Tennessee’s 48-hour waiting period for abortions will stand.
The law was first challenged six years ago, with a district court ruling the statutory waiting period violated a woman’s right to have an abortion.
Read the full story
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery announced this week that he and 20 other state attorneys general have formally called on President Joe Biden to withdraw his administration’s COVID 19 vaccine mandate on federal contractors. The state attorneys general mailed the letter Wednesday.
Read the full story
The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) has credited Tennessee’s top prosecutor with a major role in leading NAAG’s support for the U.S. Senate’s inquiry into social media’s impacts on mental health and safety.
The association announced Tuesday it sent a letter to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security backing that subcommittee’s efforts to probe Facebook and other companies regarding their effects on children and teens.
Read the full story
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III and 21 other state attorneys general urged Congress to maintain the Hyde Amendment in the 2022 budget. The amendment prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions. Members of the Biden Administration removed the amendment despite its inclusion in federal budgets for the last 45 years.
Read the full story
Thursday, Tennessee joined 19 other states to support Arkansas’ legal fight for its law banning discriminatory abortion based on a Down syndrome diagnosis. Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III announced the decision on Thursday – the same day that Missouri filed the amicus brief for the case, Leslie Rutledge v. Little Rock Planning Services.
“People with Down syndrome add unique joy, beauty, and diversity to our society. Yet the abortion of children with Down syndrome approaches genocidal levels, threatening the Down syndrome community with complete elimination,” asserted the brief. “All states share Arkansas’ compelling interests in preventing the eradication of people with Down syndrome through the practice of eugenic abortion.”
Read the full story
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III submitted a letter this week urging Facebook to stop developing an Instagram specifically for children under 13. In addition to Tennessee, 44 other attorney generals signed onto the letter addressed to Mark Zuckerberg.
The attorneys general stated that research consistently links social media to physical, emotional, and mental health issues; that children can’t handle the challenges and responsibilities of social media, such as privacy and inappropriate content; and that Facebook fails to protect the safety and privacy of children.
Read the full story
Tennessee’s 48-hour waiting period law for abortions was restored temporarily as the state makes its appeal. The decision was made on Friday by U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Friedman. He vacated his prior opinion while the state makes an appeal.
In response, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery issued a press release explaining that this decision recognized that Tennessee’s law is “likely constitutional,” and therefore could be enforced.
Read the full story
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery announced this week that he has joined 48 other attorneys general in filing a lawsuit against Facebook and alleged that the company illegally stifles competition to protect its monopoly. This, according to a press release that Slatery’s staff posted on the Tennessee Attorney General’s website.
Read the full story
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery announced Wednesday that he will support an Amicus Brief supporting the Texas election lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court. As The Tennessee Star reported Tuesday, Texas officials filed a lawsuit directly to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argues that officials in those four states changed election rules without legislative consent, thus violating the U.S. Constitution.
Read the full story
A federal judge ruled a Tennessee law requiring women to wait at least 24 or 48 hours prior to abortion unconstitutional last week. The ruling impacts any aspect of the law that references mandatory waiting periods.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III was named the defendant in the case.
Read the full story
Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III, along with the State Attorneys General Robocall Working Group, wants the FCC to continue to collaborate with state attorneys general and telecom companies to trace illegal robocalls to their source.
Slatery announced this in a press release this week.
Read the full story
Tennessee has joined a motion to intervene in litigation over whether the Equal Rights Amendment can be placed into the Constitution more than 40 years after the 1979 deadline for ratifying the proposed amendment expired.
Read the full story
Tennessee House Speaker Herbert Slatery has issued an opinion about State Rep. David Byrd (R-Waynesboro) and whether state law allows for any attempts to expel him from the Tennessee General Assembly.
Read the full story
Republican Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery has joined 17 other states on a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the justices to overturn a case that affects religious schools.
Read the full story
Tennessee Republican Attorney General Herbert Slatery wants to investigate Google to make sure the tech giant is abiding by state and federal antitrust laws.
Read the full story
If what Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery says is true, then this time next year Tennesseans should get far fewer robocalls on their cell phones. In a press release, Slatery announced this week that 12 phone companies have agreed to adopt eight principles to fight illegal robocalls. They are doing this alongside 51 attorneys general. “This agreement should better protect Tennesseans from illegal robocalls and enable this Office and other attorneys general to investigate and prosecute offenders,” Slatery said in the press release. Phone companies will work to prevent illegal robocalls by: Implementing call-blocking technology at the network level at no cost to customers. Making available to customers additional, free, easy-to-use call blocking and labeling tools. • Implementing technology to authenticate that callers are coming from a valid source. • Monitoring their networks for robocall traffic. “The agreed upon principles should will implement much-needed prevention and enforcement mechanisms that should have a meaningful impact,” said Samantha Fisher, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office on Friday. The coalition of companies includes AT&T, Bandwidth, CenturyLink, Charter, Comcast, Consolidated, Frontier, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Verizon, and Windstream, according to the press release. Phone companies will assist attorneys general anti-robocall enforcement by: Knowing…
Read the full story
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery wants federal officials to remove barriers that he says prevent health care providers from offering treatment for opioid use disorder.
Read the full story
Tennessee officials said in a press release this week that members of a Franklin-based facility committed fraud to get $6 million in TennCare benefits to which it was not entitled. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee this week made public a suit filed by Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III against ProHealth Rural Health Services, Inc., and its President and Chief Executive Officer Ray White (pictured above). By filing the suit, the state intervened in a case initially filed by a whistle blower, according to a press release from Slatery’s office. “As a designated Federally Qualified Community Health Center (FQHC) Look-Alike, ProHealth provides healthcare to all patients, regardless of their ability to pay. That status entitled ProHealth to receive Prospective Payment Service (PPS) payments, a guaranteed minimum amount of money per Medicaid patient visit,” the press release said. “As detailed in the complaint, the State alleges White knowingly submitted invoices to the State of Tennessee which falsely inflated the number of Medicaid patient visits to ProHealth from 2012-2017. That caused TennCare to pay ProHealth more than $6,000,000 to which it was not entitled.” The press release quoted Slatery as saying members of his office will not permit leniency…
Read the full story
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III urged the U.S. Senate this week to enact the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act, legislation to curb illegal robocalls and spoofing, according to a press release. A coalition of 54 attorneys general sent a letter to the U. S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation supporting the TRACED Act. Republican U.S. Senator John Thune of South Dakota and Democratic U.S. Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, are sponsoring the legislation. “In their letter, the attorneys general state that the TRACED Act enables states, federal regulators, and telecom providers to take steps to combat these illegal calls,” according to the press release Slatery’s office sent out this week. “The legislation will require voice service providers to participate in a call authentication framework to help block unwanted calls and creates an interagency working group to take additional actions to reduce robocalls and hold telemarketers and robocallers accountable.” More than 48 billion robocalls were made in 2018, making them the number one source of consumer complaints to the FTC and the FCC and resulting in millions in consumer losses, according to the press release. The state attorneys general work to enforce do-not-call laws and protect consumers in their states from being harassed and…
Read the full story
Tennessee now has a hate crime statute protecting transgender people, according to an opinion Republican state Attorney General Herbert Slatery issued earlier this month. Slatery wrote this opinion responding to a question from State Rep. Mike Stewart, D-Nashville. Tennessee’s statute protecting transgender people is the first such one in the South, according to The Tennessean. Slatery’s spokeswoman, Samantha Fisher, said Monday she had no comment. “We have nothing more to add to the opinion issued to Rep. Stewart February 8th which can be found on our website,” Fisher told The Tennessee Star. According to the state attorney general’s website, the end of that opinion says the following: For purposes of the hate-crime enhancement, a crime committed against a person because that person manifests a gender that is different than his or her biological gender at birth—i.e. a crime committed against a person because he or she is transgender—is thus necessarily committed because of, at least in part, the person’s gender. Members of the Family Action Council of Tennessee condemned Slatery’s opinion. According to Factn’s website, the organization fights for religious liberty. “In arriving at this conclusion, the attorney general ignored the fundamental canon of statutory construction that courts are ‘to…
Read the full story