"God puts his people where he needs them," Jonathan Skrmetti said during the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting.
Trudy Ring at The Advocate:
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti says it was God’s will for him to defend the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"I’m in the middle of things that are so much bigger than I have any business being in the middle of. But I’m there for a reason,” Skrmetti said Tuesday at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Dallas, The Tennessean reports. “So I just try to remember it’s not about me and that God puts his people where he needs them, where he wants them."
The AG defended the Tennessee law in December when the court heard U.S. v. Skrmetti, which has now reverted to its original name of L.W. v. Skrmetti. Three families with transgender children, along with one doctor, sued over the ban, which was signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee in March 2023.
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The Suprem Court will issue a decision before its term ends this summer, which means the ruling could come any day.
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The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission organized the panel with Skrmetti and Bangert. The commission had filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the gender-affirming care case, making a religion-based argument in favor of the ban; the denomination has long opposed any affirmation of trans identity.
At the SBC annual meeting this week, Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti (R) says it was God’s will to defend the Volunteer State’s ban on gender-affirming care at the Supreme Court. The United States v. Skrmetti case will be decided at SCOTUS later this month or early July.
Their investigations have used flimsy legal pretexts and harmed trans people's mental health, a new report says.
Daniel Villarreal at LGBTQ Nation:
Republican attorneys general in Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas have been using “abusive legal demands” to collect transgender patients’ medical records in pursuit of “ideological and political goals,” according to a 10-page report recently released by the staff of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee’s Democratic majority.
The report accuses the attorneys general of using misleading legal pretexts to make civil investigative demands of gender-affirming healthcare providers. The investigations have contributed to hostile anti-LGBTQ+ social and political climates and have also worsened queer people’s mental health, leading to “suicidal ideation, severe depression, and intense anxiety,” the report added.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s investigation alleged clinicians’ misuse of Medicaid funds as a “money-making scheme.” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey both alleged that gender-affirming clinics had violated consumer protection laws. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton demanded records from clinics in his state, Georgia, and Washington state without ever explaining why.
All four states mentioned above have passed bans on gender-affirming care for minors.
“In their sweeping anti-LGBTQIA+ campaigns, Attorney General offices demand a host of invasive items such as unredacted physical and mental health records, photographs of children’s bodies, correspondence to hospitals’ general email addresses for LGBTQIA+ patients, and lists of people referred for transgender health care,” the report stated.
A 10-page report from the Senate Finance Committee revealed that 4 Republican AGs committed abusive privacy-eroding practices to obtain trans patient data as part of their crusade against gender-affirming care for trans minors.
The 4 Republican Attorneys General named in the report are: Todd Rokita (IN), Andrew Bailey (MO), Ken Paxton (TX), and Jonathan Skrmetti (TN).
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court’s ruling and upheld Tennessee’s 2023 ban on drag shows in front of children.
Sam Stockard at Tennessee Lookout:
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court’s ruling and upheld Tennessee’s 2023 ban on adult cabaret entertainment in front of children.
The court found that Memphis theater group Friends of George’s, which puts on drag shows, failed to show standing in its challenge of the state law and instructed the U.S. District to dismiss the case.
The theater group filed suit against the state claiming the ban on cabaret performances and drag shows violated its First Amendment rights. The district court sided with Friends of George’s and declared the law unconstitutional, permanently enjoining Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy from enforcing the law in his jurisdiction. Mulroy appealed the ruling, questioning the cabaret club’s standing and the merits of an injunction overriding the ban.
The appeals court determined the group failed to meet its burden that the ban would put it in danger of prosecution and sent the case back to the lower court with orders to dismiss it.
The case stemmed from the Legislature’s passage of the Adult Entertainment Act in 2023 that made it illegal to put on adult cabaret shows on public property or in places where the entertainment could be seen by a minor.
“Adult cabaret entertainment” is defined as “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors” and feature topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, male or female impersonators and similar entertainers.
The law’s passage stemmed, in part, from complaints about an annual PRIDE parade in Jackson that could be seen by children.
The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office pointed out afterward the Sixth Circuit found that the district court was mistaken, in saying “there is no constitutional interest in exhibiting indecent material to minors.”
In a 3-judge hearing at the right-wing 6th Circuit Court, the 6th overturned a lower court ruling that barred Tennessee from enforcing drag ban law SB3 in Friends of George’s v. Mulroy by tossing out the case because Friends of George’s didn’t have any standing to sue.
A Mississippi federal judge struck down a Biden-era rule expanding anti-discrimination protections to transgender healthcare after 15 Republican-led states sued
The patients were not told that their information had been given to somebody else until after it had happened.
Christopher Wiggins at The Advocate:
In response to Republican faux outrage that started last September about the treatment of transgender Tennesseans, Vanderbilt University Medical Center handed over confidential records of patients receiving gender-affirming care to the state’s attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti.
His office had requested the private treatment information, according to a new report in the Nashville Banner. There was no notification to patients that their unredacted medical records had been shared, let alone with an agency of a government notoriously hostile to transgender people.
A list of 106 transgender patients treated by doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center was received from Skrmetti’s office when the hospital learned that it was under investigation, the Nashville Banner reports.
Skrmetti aimed to access all transgender patient records, the outlet reports, when VUMC provided the documents to the state.
A class action lawsuit was filed on Monday by two of those patients.
According to the lawsuit, the hospital provided medical information to the attorney general violating the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the medical center’s privacy policies despite knowing the state targeted transgender people.
Identified only as Patients 1 and 2, the plaintiffs are not named.
“The attachment contained 106 entries of individual patients without explanation as to the source of the names on the list,” the suit reads. “The list included individuals who are: (1) on the state employees’ health plan and their family members, and (2) people who receive their health care through TennCare. Some of the VUMC patients whose records were disclosed were not even patients of the VUMC Transgender Health Clinic.”
Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti (R) breached the privacy of trans patients who went to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for gender-affirming care services by obtaining unredacted and confidential records in violation of HIPAA.
See Also:
Nashville Scene: Suit: AG Had Target List of Transgender Patients
State attorneys general are charged with ensuring laws within their borders are enforced. Occasionally they may join together, for example,
David Badash at NCRM:
State attorneys general are charged with ensuring laws within their borders are enforced. Occasionally they may join together, for example, to sue a manufacturer who has violated multiple state laws, or even join an amicus brief laying out their positions on matters before the U.S. Supreme Court.
But increasing Republican state attorneys general are working across their own state lines in attempts to impose their own state laws and more on residents of other states – or the entire nation.
Tennessee’s Republican attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, was appointed in September of 2022 by the state Supreme Court.
Since then, Skrmetti has been actively attacking abortion rights, transgender children’s health care, drag shows, firearms regulations, corporate diversity programs, a Florida school’s policy on a transgender student’s privacy, and the decision by credit card companies to separately classify gun purchases, to name a few issues.
He or his office have also accessed the medical records of transgender people,
Earlier this week anchor Rachel Maddow took a look into Skrmetti “demanding and obtaining the private medical records of trans people in Tennessee as Republicans look for ways to make the lives of trans people miserable,” MSNBC reported.
Just yesterday, Skrmetti headed a coalition of 13 Republican state attorneys general “warning the nation’s largest companies — many of which have diversity and equity programs — they could face legal action for using race-based policies,” Tennessee Lookout reported. The sharply-worded letter “put Fortune 100 companies on notice they could be hit with legal action for violating the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which put an end to using race as a basis for admitting students to college.”
“If your company previously resorted to racial preferences or naked quotas to offset its bigotry, that discriminatory path is now definitively closed,” the letter states. “Your company must overcome its underlying bias and treat all employees, all applicants, and all contractors equally, without regard for race.”
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Noting that “Skrmetti’s predecessor, Herbert Slatery, had frequently taken advantage of his position to impose his personal political opinions upon lawsuits and people in other jurisdictions,” Lottman criticized Skrmetti’s decision to sign on to the brief supporting a Veterans Administration nurse trying to prevent abortion services at her Texas hospital, “for both religious and medical reasons,” Lottman noted.
He also pointed out that “in January, The Tennessean reported that Skrmetti had joined three other non-Tennessee court cases, including a nakedly political, challenge to President Biden’s plan for unscrambling the disastrous situation at the U.S.’s southern border.”
Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti (R) isn't content with making his state to be the only state following his right-wing edicts on hot-button culture war issued ranging from drag shows to abortion access to ESG and DEI in the workplace, as he is making other red states follow his petty justifications.
From the 07.10.2023 edition of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show:
