Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti provided an update on prominent lawsuits his office has filed under his leadership and discussed his goals for the remainder of his eight-year term during an exclusive sit-down interview this week on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Skrmetti, who began serving as attorney general in 2022 after being appointed by the Tennessee Supreme Court, said, “I’ve been blessed with a great team and there is a lot of work for us to do.”
“There are a few different fronts where I’m very proud of the work that we’ve done,” Skrmetti added.
One case Skrmetti said he was particularly proud to lead is the lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., which owns Ticketmaster.
That lawsuit, filed in May, has since been joined by the U.S. Department of Justice and 39 other states.
“Ticketmaster has had a broken market for decades. And of course, we’re capitalists. This is not some communist effort, but markets need to work. There has to be competition. That’s the whole point. And when you have an actor in a market that can shut down competition, that can deprive people of innovation, of opportunities to make choices about where they spend their money, it’s almost like the administrative state. There’s just no accountability. So we want to make sure that there’s accountability and transparency in that market,” Skrmetti explained.
Skrmetti also discussed his office’s consumer protection lawsuit, filed in December 2023, against BlackRock’s Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) investing.
“It’s a very simple case. It just says you can’t say that you’re doing everything you can to maximize the return on investment and at the same time say that you’re doing everything you can to maximize the benefit to the environment. One of those things is true. Both cannot be true. After we filed suit, we’ve seen some significant changes from BlackRock dialing way back on some of these ESG commitments,” Skrmetti said.
“It’s a $9+ trillion dollar asset manager and there have been a lot of problems with ESG and I’m hoping that as the tip of the spear on that, we’re able to make some big changes,” Skrmetti added.
Skrmetti said his all-time “favorite” lawsuit is his office’s antitrust suit challenging the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) name, image, and likeness (NIL) recruitment ban, which the attorney general argues violates the Sherman Act.
“It turns out that the NCAA was violating the Sherman Act when it said that student athletes could not negotiate their name, image, and likeness rights until after they had committed to a school, because depending on what school they go to, they may have different opportunities. So you’re cutting out the ability of the market to set the appropriate value,” Skrmetti explained. “When somebody’s got too much power in a market and they break down the ability of the market to work fairly, that’s a legal problem.”
“This is my favorite lawsuit that I will ever have in my life, and every week so far this season, I have felt better and better about standing up for the rights of student athletes,” Skrmetti added.
Another lawsuit Skrmetti is leading that has drawn national attention is his office’s suit against the U.S. Department of Education’s (DOE) rule that seeks to rewrite Title IX to abolish sex-based distinctions in educational activities and programs to accommodate transgender individuals.
Skrmetti said he expects that lawsuit, which the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that no part of the DOE’s Title IX rule should go into effect while the case proceeds, to be decided “soon.”
“We have some arguments coming up. It may go back to the Supreme Court, you never know for sure, but there’s a distinct possibility it could. But we should, certainty sometime soon, get an answer about if this rule is going to be completely vacated and wiped out,” Skrmetti said.
Aside from already-filed litigation, Skrmetti said his office has also been focused on looking into the “social media impact on teen mental health” and the “war on appliances,” which the attorney general summarized as the federal government “trying to over regulate without lawful authority to do things that are going to deprive us of choices about appliances.”
Further on federal overreach and unlawful regulation, Skrmetti said the results of this year’s presidential election will have a major effect on his office in terms of productivity and attentiveness to pushing back on the federal government, noting how additional funding for his office may be needed.
“Part of it depends on, most likely, the election. And that’s not because there’s a partisan reason to sue the federal government. We’ve seen a real reliance on regulatory creativity and if that continues, we’re going to have to push back,” Skrmetti said.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
