Commentary: Bait and Switch Tactics in Nullifying Tennessee’s Attorney General and President Trump

In a shocking development, State Sen. Janice Bowling’s thrice-defeated “Restoring State Sovereignty Through Nullification Act,” re-introduced this year as SB 479/HB 441, has been abruptly amended to eliminate the controversial “nullification” provisions that I testified against in last year’s “summer study” hearing, to focus instead on micro-managing the Tennessee Attorney General’s “Strategic Litigation Unit.” The SLU is the division of the Hon. Jonathan Skrmetti’s office that (according to the AG’s website) “handles complex affirmative litigation and defends the separation of powers and constitutional rights of Tennesseans.” The amended language is apparently retaliation against General Skrmetti for having issued a carefully-reasoned legal opinion in 2024 (at the request of State Sen. Richard Briggs) that (correctly) concluded that a prior version of the nullification bill was unconstitutional.

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