Title IX protects students from sex discrimination. The U.S. Department of Education wants to redefine ‘sex’ to include gender identity — which would add more protections for LGBTQ students.
Tennessee’s new attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, is pushing back on that. In doing so, he’s picking up where his predecessor left off.
In an interview with WPLN News, Attorney General Skrmetti says he is going to follow the letter of the law.
And he says Tennessee’s laws are quite clear: the state is not interested in expanding protections for transgender students.
“This is a situation where my job is to enforce the state’s policies. I don’t make those policies,” Skrmetti says. “And so, if I were to say I want to be responsive to the specific concerns of transgender Tennesseans, that would come at the expense of being responsive to the law that Tennessee has.”
Skrmetti told the U.S. Education Secretary that he thinks the proposed change would promote sex-based discrimination and threaten constitutional rights. He says the federal government is overreaching by making changes to Title IX.
And if Tennesseans want to change the law, he says they should look to the state legislature — not his office — to make that happen.
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