Tennessee A.G. Skrmetti Praises Trump Admin for Reversing Biden’s Position State’s Right to Ban Transgender Surgeries for Kids

Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti on Friday released a statement praising the Trump administration for reversing the position held by the Biden-era Department of Justice (DOJ) in the lawsuit targeting the Volunteer State’s law banning transgender surgeries, puberty blockers, and other treatments for children, which is now being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Skrmetti made the statement in a post to the social media platform X yesterday, where he also cautioned that the Supreme Court has yet to release a final ruling, despite the federal government dropping its previous support for the non-government plaintiffs that sought to allow minors to receive transgender treatments.

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Trump Faces Federal Employee Unions in Government Efficiency Battle

AFGE members

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to drastically cut government and clean out inefficiencies, but he faces an entrenched power in Washington, D.C. that may throw a wrench in his plans: federal government public employee unions.

“For president-elect Trump to succeed at making the federal bureaucracy more efficient and accountable to the American people, he’ll have to once again do battle with federal unions,” Max Nelsen, a labor policy expert at the Freedom Foundation, told The Center Square.

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Forthcoming Supreme Court Decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti Likely to ‘Drive a Lot of Change’ Inside Gender Clinics and Hospitals, Tennessee AG Says

Tennessee A.G. Jonathan Skrmetti

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said he believes that if the U.S. Supreme Court rules to uphold Tennessee’s state that bans irreversible gender transitioning treatments for minors in the case United States v. Skrmetti, the demand for such treatments across the nation will also see a halt.

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Exclusive: Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti Reflects on Oral Arguments in United States v. Skrmetti

Jonathan Skrmetti

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti sat down for an exclusive interview with The Tennessee Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy on Friday to detail last week’s oral arguments in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case United States v. Skrmetti and how the nation is perceiving the case in the days after.

Last Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, a case challenging Tennessee’s law that bans irreversible gender transitioning treatments for minors.

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AG Jonathan Skrmetti ‘Absolutely Confident’ in How Tennessee Defended Law Banning ‘Gender Transition’ Puberty Blockers for Minors Before Supreme Court

Jonathan Skrmetti

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said he believes that Tennessee Solicitor General Matt Rice strongly defended Senate Bill 1 (SB1) in front of the Supreme Court. SB1 is Tennessee’s state law that bans irreversible gender transition-inducing puberty blockers and hormones for minors.

Governor Bill Lee signed SB1 into law last year, which forbids healthcare providers from performing or administering to underage children “gender-affirming” medical procedures or treatments – including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and sex-change surgeries – for the purpose of enabling the child to identify with the opposite gender.

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Tennessee Firearms Association Joins Amicus Brief in Support of Smith and Wesson in U.S. Supreme Court Case

SCOTUS

The Tennessee Firearms Association and Tennessee Firearms Foundation joined an amicus brief on Tuesday filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in the appeal by Smith and Wesson in the case Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos.

The case stems from a lawsuit brought by the Mexican government in 2021, in which the government alleged U.S. gun manufacturers should be liable for “aiding and abetting” gun violence carried out by Mexican drug cartels.

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Legal Expert Phill Kline: DOJ’s ‘Radical’ Election Interference Operation on Full Display in Virginia Case

Phill Kline, former Kansas Attorney General and current law professor at Liberty University School of Law, said the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) “radical” election interference operation is on full display following Wednesday’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that allows Virginia to remove individuals identified as noncitizens from its voter rolls.

Earlier this month, the DOJ sued Virginia over removing non-citizens from its rolls ahead of the November 5 general election.

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Supreme Court Takes Rapid Action in Appeal to Remove Noncitizens from Virginia Voter Rolls

Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday docketed the appeal filed Sunday by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares after a federal appeals court declined to overrule a lower court’s decision to force Virginia to add approximately 1,600 noncitizens back to its voter rolls.

According to the Supreme Court’s online portal, the case was docketed on Monday after Virginia submitted its appeal for the high court to reverse a lower court’s decision on Sunday.

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Tennessee Congressional Delegation Honor the ‘Scarboro 85’ on 69th Anniversary of Desegregation at Oak Ridge Public Schools

Classroom Students

The entire Tennessee congressional delegation sponsored a resolution this week celebrating the Scarboro 85 students from the Scarboro neighborhood in Oak Ridge. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, these students made history by entering all-white classrooms.

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that separating children in public schools based on race was unconstitutional.

In a second opinion issued on May 31, 1955, the Supreme Court decreed that schools should be desegregated “with all deliberate speed.”

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Georgia Public Service Commission Could Issue Ruling This Week in Railroad Case

Sandersville Railroad

The Georgia Public Service Commission could decide a high-profile case this week that pits long-time property owners against a railroad looking to seize land for a new rail spur.

The Sandersville Railroad, a Class III short-line railroad, petitioned the PSC to condemn land for a 4.5-mile-long spur. Regardless of how the PSC rules, its decision will likely be appealed to Fulton County Superior Court and beyond, possibly even to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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At Least Nine States Have Pro-Abortion Ballot Measures for November, with Some Facing Lawsuits

At least nine states will have pro-abortion constitutional amendment proposals on ballots in November, during a presidential election with high voter turnout, with some states facing lawsuits from conservatives and pro-life groups.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and sent the question of abortion legalization back to the states, some states are facing ballot measures over whether to ensure that abortion is codified in state constitutions.

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Tennessee AG Skrmetti Applauds U.S. Supreme Court’s Ruling to Block the Education Department’s Title IX Rule from Taking Effect

Jonathan Skrmetti

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti applauded the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling on Friday to block the U.S. Department of Education’s (DOE) Title IX rule from taking effect.

The DOE’s final rule, blocked from being implemented by the nation’s highest court, would have rewritten Title IX to encompass gender identity and sexual orientation.

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Commentary: Draining the Swamp Is Now a Job for Congress

Congress

Wading into the confusing abyss of administrative law, on June 28 the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote, overruled the much-criticized 1984 decision in Chevron, restoring the bedrock principle — commanded by both Article III of the Constitution and Section 706 the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act — that it is the province of courts, not administrative agency bureaucrats, to interpret federal laws. This may sound like an easy ruling, but the issue had long bedeviled the Supreme Court. Even Justice Antonin Scalia, an administrative law expert, supported Chevron prior to his death in 2016. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Chief Justice John Roberts sure-footedly dispatched Chevron.

If, as I wrote for The American Conservative in 2021, “Taming the administrative state is the issue of our time,” why did the Supreme Court unanimously (albeit with a bare six-member quorum) decide in Chevron to defer to administrative agencies interpretations of ambiguous statutes, and why did conservatives — at least initially — support the decision? In a word, politics. In 1984, the President in charge of the executive branch was Ronald Reagan, and the D.C. Circuit — where most administrative law cases are decided — was (and had been for decades) controlled by liberal activist judges. President Reagan’s deputy solicitor general, Paul Bator, argued the Chevron case, successfully urging the Court to overturn a D.C. Circuit decision (written by then-Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg) that had invalidated EPA regulations interpreting the Clean Air Act. Thus, in the beginning, “Chevron deference” meant deferring to Reagan’s agency heads and their de-regulatory agenda.

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Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency Won’t Appeal Court Loss in ‘Open Fields’ Doctrine Case

Hunter Hollingsworth

After losing an appeal in May, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) has decided it will not take its case on the “open fields” doctrine to the Tennessee Supreme Court. 

The case began when Terry Rainwaters and Hunter Hollingsworth found hidden cameras on their property, placed there by TWRA, according to the Institute of Justice, which took on the case. 

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Christy Kelly: Supreme Court Ruling Will Force NY Judge in Trump’s Hush Money Case to Acknowledge He Erred in Allowing Prosecution to Present Hope Hicks Testimony

Christy Kelly, reporter at The Arizona Sun Times, said the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling on Monday in Trump v. United States that former President Donald Trump is immune from federal prosecution for official acts he took while in office may have a major impact on the former president’s conviction in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.

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Legal Analyst Christy Kelly Breaks Down SCOTUS Ruling on Presidential Immunity and How It May Affect Lawfare Against Former President Trump

Trump SCOTUS

Christy Kelly, reporter at The Arizona Sun Times, said the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling on Monday in Trump v. United States that former President Donald Trump is immune from federal prosecution for official acts he took while in office is certain to affect current and past litigation surrounding the former president.

However, the nation’s highest court also ruled that there is no immunity for unofficial acts.

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Biden: Supreme Court Ruling on Presidential Immunity ‘Dangerous Precedent’

Joe Biden

President Joe Biden Monday night said the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the president has “absolute immunity” when acting in his core constitutional duties is “a dangerous precedent” that “undermines the rule of law of this nation.”

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision ruled that the “president’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity.”

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America First Legal Files Amicus Brief with SCOTUS to Support Freedom for Bannon Pending Appeal

Stephen Bannon

America First Legal (AFL) filed an amicus brief Wednesday on behalf of Georgia U.S. Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA-11), who chairs the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, in support of Stephen K. Bannon’s emergency stay application to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking his continued release pending further appeal of his convictions.

Bannon, former chief of staff to former President Donald Trump and host of the popular show War Room, was sentenced to four months imprisonment for a 2022 conviction on contempt of Congress charges for ignoring a subpoena from the January 6 Select Committee.

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Commentary: Court Threatens First Amendment Rights of Tennessee Star After Release of Covenant School Shooting Documents

Judge I'Ashea L. Myles

The editor-in-chief and publisher of The Tennessee Star was ordered to appear in court last week and threatened with charges of contempt after his newspaper reported on an anonymously leaked collection of documents authored by Nashville mass shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale. Michael Patrick Leahy was joined by his attorneys in court on Monday for a “show-cause hearing,” where the journalist was asked by Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles to demonstrate why his outlet’s reporting does not subject him to contempt proceedings and sanctions.

On March 27, 2023, Hale (born Audrey Elizabeth Hale) entered the Covenant School armed with three semiautomatic guns and murdered six people, including three 9-year-old children. Hale, who was eventually shot and killed by police in the school, was a transgender man and former student at Covenant who harbored extremist sentiments on race, gender, and politics. The massacre remains the deadliest mass shooting in Tennessee history.

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Exclusive: Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti Says SCOTUS Decision to Take Up Case Challenging State Law Banning Transgender Treatment for Minors Will Be a ‘Major Step Toward Clarity’

Jonathan Skrmetti

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti joined Tuesday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show for an exclusive interview where he discussed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear arguments and rule on whether Tennessee’s law that bans “gender-affirming care” on minors violates the Constitution.

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Michael Patrick Leahy on SCOTUS Decision to Take Up Case Challenging Tennessee Law Banning Transgender Surgery for Minors: ‘Transgender Youth is a Creation of the Left’

Michael Patrick Leahy

Michael Patrick Leahy, Editor-in-Chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star, reacted to Monday’s announcement by the U.S. Supreme Court that it would hear arguments and rule on whether a Tennessee law that bans “gender-affirming care” on minors violates the Constitution.

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Election Integrity Advocates Score Wins in Majority of Lawsuits Ahead of November

Several election lawsuits filed recently with significant impact on the 2024 presidential election have been decided in favor of election integrity proponents, ensuring laws remain enforced ahead of the November election.

The lawsuits filed focused on candidate eligibility, different changes in law, and alleged violations of election laws. Most of them have resulted in wins for election integrity, while two are ongoing.

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U.S. Supreme Court Allows State Officials to Ban January 6 Protesters from Holding State and Local Offices for ‘Insurrection’

Couy Griffin

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from a former New Mexico county commissioner who was removed from office by a state court for his role in the January 6 protest. This left in place a lower court’s decision to remove and bar Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, founder of Cowboys for Trump, from office for “aid[ing] the insurrection even though he did not personally engage in violence.” Griffin was convicted of a misdemeanor for trespassing on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. Griffin never entered the Capitol building.

His attorney Peter Ticktin stated in court filings submitting to the Supreme Court, “If the decision … is to stand, at least in New Mexico, it is now the crime of insurrection to gather people to pray together for the United States of America on the unmarked restricted grounds of the Capitol building.” He argued that Griffin was “fundamentally exercising his Constitutional rights to free speech and assembly.”

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Senate Bill Would Ban Student Loan Forgiveness for Protestors Convicted of a Crime

Republican U.S. senators introduced a bill that would ban student loan forgiveness for protestors convicted of a crime while protesting on U.S. college campuses.

The No Bailouts for Campus Criminals Act was filed by U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., with multiple cosponsors. The bill would prevent any college or university student who is convicted of any offense under federal or state law while protesting at a higher education institution from having their federal student loans forgiven, cancelled, waived or modified.

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Arizona Republican Party Joins Two Other State GOPs Filing an Amicus Curiae Brief in Kari Lake’s and Mark Finchem’s Voting Machine Tabulator Lawsuit

Attorney William Olson

The Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) submitted a joint Amicus Curiae brief on Thursday with the Georgia Republican Party and the Republican State Committee of Delaware supporting Kari Lake’s and Mark Finchem’s Petition for Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court. The pair are appealing the lower courts’ decisions against their lawsuit challenging the use of electronic voting machine tabulators in elections. Under the new leadership of AZGOP Chair Gina Swoboda, who has a lengthy history in election integrity work including heading the Voter Reference Foundation, the AZGOP is heavily focused on election integrity. 

Authored by attorney William J. Olson, the brief argues that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals erred by dismissing the case claiming Lake and Finchem lacked standing. The court affirmed the trial court’s granting of the defendants’ motion to dismiss, asserting that the pair lacked standing because “speculative allegations that voting machines may be hackable are insufficient to establish an injury in fact under Article III.” The complaint emphasized that the lower courts “conflated standing with merits, twisting the standing rules to require much more — that the complaint prove facts sufficient to grant relief.” 

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Kari Lake and Mark Finchem File New Brief with U.S. Supreme Court in Voting Machine Tabulator Case After Defendants Fail to Respond

Kari Lake Mark Finchem

Kari Lake and Mark Finchem filed a Supplemental Brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, adding support for their Petition for Writ of Certiorari and Motion to Expedite asking the court to hear an appeal of the dismissal of their lawsuit to stop the use of electronic voting machine tabulators in elections. The defendant Arizona officials failed to file a response to the pair’s petition, boosting the chances SCOTUS might accept the case and implying they did not object to the statements in the petition. 

The new brief added more allegations of false representations by Maricopa County officials. It said the courts relied on their false representations when they dismissed and affirmed their case, sanctioning the pair’s lawyers. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the plaintiffs’ injuries were “too speculative” for Article III, which requires showing of an injury. The brief said the court based this determination “in part on false representations that Maricopa County performed required preelection logic and accuracy (‘L&A’) testing and used certified and approved voting system software.” The court “expressly relied on false representations that Maricopa’s elections were protected from manipulation.”

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Georgia Public Service Commission Says Railroad Can Condemn Land for Spur

sandersville railroad

A Georgia Public Service Commission hearing officer has ruled a railroad can take private land from several Sparta property owners, saying its proposed rail spur “serves a legitimate public purpose.”

The Sandersville Railroad, a Class III short line railroad that has served the area since 1893, petitioned the PSC on March 8, 2023, to condemn land for a proposed 4.5-mile-long spur. The railroad subsequently moved to condemn additional land.

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Trump Calls for Sanctions, Censure of Special Counsel Jack Smith

Jack Smith and Donald Trump (composite image)

Former President Donald Trump called for special counsel Jack Smith to be sanctioned or censured for “attacking” the judge in Trump’s classified documents case. 

Trump’s comments on Thursday come after Smith and his team of prosecutors made it clear they think Judge Aileen Cannon’s latest ruling was based on “an unstated and fundamentally flawed legal premise.” Prosecutors objected to Cannon’s order to produce proposed jury instructions under two different legal scenarios. Smith said both legal scenarios were flawed.

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Commentary: Supreme Court Takes on California’s Uber-Disclosure Laws Aiming to Crack Down on ‘Dark Money’ Ads

San Francisco City Hall

When you watch a political ad, often you’ll see a disclaimer of who the ad was paid for by, usually a political action committee, but what about the donors to the committee? Or the donor’s donors?

That’s the bridge that a San Francisco campaign finance law seeks to cross — now being challenged at the U.S. Supreme Court in No on E v. Chiu — and to prohibit an incredibly common practice in campaign finance, which are donations from anonymous sources.

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Commentary: Biden’s DOJ Thumbs Nose at SCOTUS on Key J6 Felony Charge

Matthew Graves

Donald Trump filed his brief Tuesday at the U.S. Supreme Court to defend his argument that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution. Noting the lack of historical precedent and dire ramifications for the future, Trump’s attorneys warned that “a denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future President with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office, and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents.”

Oral arguments on the groundbreaking question are set for April 25; a final opinion, which could be announced in late May or sometime in June before the current SCOTUS term ends, represents a do-or-die situation for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment against the former president for the events of January 6 and his alleged attempts to “overturn” the 2020 election. The case is now on hold awaiting a decision by SCOTUS.

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Kari Lake, Mark Finchem Appeal Their Case Seeking to Ban Electronic Voting Machine Tabulators to the U.S. Supreme Court, Add New Evidence Including ‘False Statements’ by Defendants

Kari Lake and Mark Finchem

Kari Lake and Mark Finchem filed a Petition for Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, appealing the dismissal of their lawsuit against Arizona officials to stop the use of electronic voting machine tabulators. The 210-page petition added new allegations stating that the defendants lied to the court and that new evidence had surfaced exposing the vulnerabilities of the machines to bad actors.

“New evidence from other litigation and public-record requests shows defendants made false statements to the district court regarding the safeguards allegedly followed to ensure the accuracy of the vote, on which the district court relied,” the petition asserted. 

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Pro-Life Pregnancy Group Appeals to SCOTUS in Clash with New Jersey AG over ‘Unlawful’ Subpoena

First Choice Building

by Noah Slayter   An organization that operates pro-life pregnancy centers in New Jersey asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case involving what the centers’ petition calls an “improper” and “unlawful” subpoena by state Attorney General Matthew Platkin. Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal firm known as ADF, filed a petition with the high court Feb. 26 on behalf of First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, asking it to force a lower court to hear the case. A federal district court judge dismissed the pregnancy resource organization’s case Feb. 15, citing “lack of jurisdiction.” In December, Platkin, a Democrat, subpoenaed First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, which operates five pregnancy centers by that name in the state, over what he called potential violations of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act. “With zero justification, the attorney general is unlawfully targeting and harassing First Choice, simply because the resources it provides help women in need continue their pregnancies rather than abort their unborn children,” ADF legal counsel Tim Garrison said Friday in a written statement to The Daily Signal. The District Court incorrectly denied First Choice’s right “to address their claims in federal court,” Garrison said, “and should not affirm AG Platkin’s abuse of power after he initiated an illegitimate and harassing…

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Tennessee Joins Amicus Brief in Supreme Court Case Against FDA

TN AG Jonathan Skrmetti

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti joined in filing an amicus brief with 21 other state attorneys general in a case being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court that could decide the fate of a popular abortion pill.

“This case is about protecting the authority of the people of Tennessee to govern themselves,” Skrmetti stated, according to the attorney general’s website. “In our system, major policy decisions are made by the people through their elected representatives and decisions about abortion law are made by state governments. The U.S. Constitution prevents federal bureaucrats from undermining Tennessee’s Human Life Protection Act no matter how much they disagree with it.”

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