In Jonathan Skrmetti’s first year as Tennessee Attorney General, his office has enforced loosened gun laws, advocated for a state law that takes power away from local prosecutors in death penalty review cases and defended many controversial state laws.

Skrmetti, who was appointed in August 2022, reflected on his first year during an interview last week.

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“It’s a great opportunity to serve,” Skrmetti said after speaking to the Memphis Rotary Club. “I never would have expected to get this job, and I just feel extraordinarily fortunate to be back in public service and to be running such a great office.”

Permitless carry for 18-year-olds

Skrmetti earlier this year negotiated a deal with a gun-rights group that expanded the right to carry without a permit to 18-year-olds.

That group, the Firearms Policy Coalition, had sued the state after the permitless carry law was passed in 2021. The law applied to people 21 and older, with narrow exceptions; the group argued the law discriminated against people 18 to 20.

Skrmetti’s office ultimately agreed, and a federal judge in Knoxville approved a settlement on March 27 — the same day as the Covenant School shooting in Nashville — that says the law is unconstitutional and that law enforcement can’t enforce it against young adults.

“With respect to the age restriction, there can’t be any exception as a constitutional right guaranteed to the people,” Skrmetti said. “You can’t treat 18- to 20-year-olds differently than you treat everybody else with respect to gun ownership.”

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Skrmetti, who worked for years in Memphis, said he recognizes that crime is a big issue in the city. As of Oct. 13, Memphis has experienced 261 murders this year, compared to 139 at the same point in 2019.

“It is one of the things that is holding the city back from achieving its potential,” Skrmetti said. “And I think there has to be a lot of creative thinking and a lot of aggressive work done to get Memphis to where it needs to be and to protect the people in Memphis.”

“I know it’s been popularly conceived as a drag ban, but nobody is going to prosecute a Mrs. Doubtfire stage production.”

Jonathan Skrmetti
Tennessee Attorney General

In July, the Memphis City Council approved a referendum on gun-control measures that will be put on the 2024 ballot. These will include proposals on banning assault weapons and requiring permits for guns the state currently allows Tennesseans to carry without permits.

Skrmetti said he cannot speculate without knowing exactly what the referendum says, but he said a U.S. Supreme Court ruling regarding the Second Amendment is “very broad.” The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen case in the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a concealed-carry permitting law in New York and affirmed that the ability to carry a pistol in public was a constitutional right.

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He said the Bruen precedent could cause more gun restrictions to be overturned.

“There’s reason to think that it’s going to be pretty hard for them to survive those challenges,” Skrmetti said.

Death penalty appeals

Shelby County Criminal Court Division 1 Judge Paula Skahan ruled in July that a new state law shifting some power from local DAs to Skrmetti’s office is unconstitutional.

The law lets the state attorney general take over representation of the state in some cases where people are trying to get off death row. The state constitution says that power rests with local prosecutors, who are accountable to voters.

The ruling allows Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy to represent the state in the case of Larry McKay, who has been on death row for nearly 40 years, claiming false evidence was presented during his trial.

Skrmetti’s office is appealing the decision. 

“We feel a lot of responsibility for the victims at that point, and my office, handling the federal post-conviction matters, handling the appellate matters, does most of the work,” Skrmetti said. “And it just made sense to put everything there to ensure consistency in the way the cases were filed.”

Skrmetti said his office requested an expedited appeal because of the amount of time it takes to go through all of the “legal hoops.”

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Skrmetti said the legislature has consistently sought to execute people on death row more quickly, because long delays can be “really, really hard on the families of the victims.

“The death penalty is final in a way that nothing else is, and so we need to make sure that we do everything right. But at the same time, we need to do it as expeditiously as possible so that the victim’s families aren’t out there for a lifetime waiting for justice.”

After a botched execution in 2022, Gov. Bill Lee paused all executions and ordered a review of the state’s lethal injection protocol. Lee expressed no desire to end the death penalty. Skrmetti said it’s up to Lee and the legislature, not him, to decide whether to keep it.

“Whether or not we should have the death penalty is a separate policy question,” Skrmetti said. “We have it. It’s the law in the state.”

‘The legislature voted for it’

Skrmetti defended a number of controversial recent laws, including the ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

“I think the ban should be in place because the legislature voted for it,” Skrmetti said. “This is regulation of the medical industry. That’s something that’s traditionally within the state’s authority.”

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A 15-year-old transgender girl from Nashville challenged that law, saying it discriminates against LGBTQ people. A federal judge in Nashville agreed and blocked it, but the appeals court in September allowed it to take effect.

Skrmetti pointed to debates over such care in several European countries. His office argued the American medical establishment, which broadly supports gender-affirming care, has been “captured by activists.”

“These are pretty novel issues,” Skrmetti said. “We have seen a lot of concern in European countries that were on the same track as the United States that have looked at the developing research and expressed real concerns and pulled way back from what their policies and laws were out of concern that what they were doing was hurting kids.”

The AG’s office is investigating Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s transgender clinic for what he said were fraudulent claims, alleging it manipulated billing codes to get paid by insurance companies that do not cover transgender care.

“There’s a video out there with the doctors saying, ‘We use different codes because we couldn’t get reimbursed if you use the correct codes,’” Skrmetti said. “So it’s a fraud investigation.”

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Skrmetti faced criticism for acquiring trans patients’ data, possibly violating their privacy.

“We, like every other AG’s office, have the authority to get medical records to look for billing fraud,” Skrmetti said. “When we get those records, they’re held very confidentially.”

Drag bill not a ‘blanket ban’

In another case, Memphis-based theater company Friends of George’s is challenging a law limiting drag performances, saying it violates the First Amendment.

A federal district judge in Memphis blocked the law and Skrmetti appealed.

Skrmetti said the law is not a “blanket ban” on drag shows, and is focused on the “sexual explicitness” of a performance.

“It covers all sorts of adult entertainment,” Skrmetti said.

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But while he said it was limited to sexually explicit performances, others suggest drag is inherently sexually explicit.

An East Tennessee drag performer was allowed to join the Friends of George’s case after receiving a warning from a local prosecutor days before a pride festival.

“I know it’s been popularly conceived as a drag ban, but nobody is going to prosecute a Mrs. Doubtfire stage production or something,” Skrmetti said.

U.S. law targeting abortion bans ‘poorly written’

Skrmetti and 18 other Republican AGs signed a letter in May opposing the Biden administration’s law that prohibits women’s health records from being released to investigators in states where abortion is illegal, including Tennessee.

Skrmetti said that rule is “pretty complicated and convoluted and poorly written.”

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“It doesn’t just deal with getting records from out of state,” Skrmetti said. “It says any abortions that are authorized under federal law. And given the behavior of the federal government, we anticipate that it can be read very expansively to try to prevent enforcement of state laws and states that have various restrictions on abortion.”

The General Assembly passed a law in 2021 targeting prosecutors’ discretion and allowing the AG to ask the Tennessee Supreme Court to appoint a special prosecutor if the local prosecutor refuses to enforce a certain law.

Nashville’s prosecutor prompted the law after refusing to enforce an anti-trans law related to bathroom signage. Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy has only said he would place a low priority on certain crimes.

The AG’s office has not used the law because it is very narrow, Skrmetti said.

“Even in situations where it seems like certain of our DAs are disinclined to enforce certain laws,” he said, “there are only a couple instances where they made statements sweeping enough to potentially trigger that.”