When Jonathan Skrmetti was appointed as Tennessee’s attorney general in 2022, he told Nashville’s WPLN he had little media training and was a lawyer, not a politician.
But since taking office, he has weighed in — at least publicly — on more issues than his predecessor, Herbert Slatery, did, and those positions have been more in line with the current conservatism of Gov. Bill Lee and the Tennessee legislature than the moderate conservative of Lee’s predecessor, Bill Haslam, and Slatery, who was appointed during Haslam’s term.
Skrmetti told WPLN after his appointment he wanted to be transparent so that more people understand what the attorney general does in the state.
Whether anyone agrees or disagrees with his decisions, we believe that’s the right approach. We’d rather know his thinking than to be left wondering why he made the determination he did.
In recent days, Skrmetti has said the lawsuit challenging National Guard deployment to Memphis lacks merit, celebrated a recent United States District Court decision that said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services exceeded its authority by including gender identity in a Title IX case of discrimination “on the basis of sex,” and joined 23 other attorneys general in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify that a clause in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution “does not provide automatic citizenship to everyone born in the United States.”