A federal judge today temporarily blocked a Biden administration rule expanding federal nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ students in six states, including Tennessee. The decision by U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves halts enforcement of changes to Title IX — the federal civil rights law preventing sex discrimination in schools and education programs that receive government funding — that were finalized in April by the Education Department. The other affected states are Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia, The Hill reports. Just a few days ago, another federal judge temporarily blocked the rule from taking effect in Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana. Other challenges are still pending. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti released this statement after the ruling. He joined a suit challenging the rule earlier this month.

The TBA’s new executive officers and Board of Governors members took office Friday at the Annual Convention in Memphis. Officers for the 2024-2025 bar year are: Nashville lawyer Ed Lanquist Jr., president; Knoxville lawyer Heidi Barcus, president-elect; Charlotte Knight Griffin of Eads, vice president; Jackson lawyer Terica Smith, secretary; and Knoxville lawyer Mary Beth Maddox, treasurer. Memphis lawyer Jim Barry, who wrapped up his year in office last week, will move into the immediate past president role. Read more about those in the presidential line of succession at the links above. Leadership in the TBA's House of Delegates also changed last week with Franklin lawyer Shauna Billingsley taking over as speaker. She previously served as deputy speaker.

Eads attorney Charlotte Knight Griffin took office as vice president of the Tennessee Bar Association (TBA) last week during the group’s Annual Convention in Memphis. She will advance to the presidency in June 2026. Knight Griffin began her career in private practice in Memphis after earning her law degree from the University of Tennessee College of Law. She joined Memphis Light, Gas and Water as a staff attorney in 1978 and retired in April 2023 after 45 years of service. Knight Griffin has been active in the TBA for many years, most recently serving as speaker of the House of Delegates and a member of the Board of Governors. She is a past chair of the Local Government Practice and Litigation sections, a charter fellow of the Young Lawyers Division (YLD), a past executive officer of the YLD and president of the TBA YLD Fellows. Read more about her career in this press release.

Knoxville attorney Heidi Barcus took office as president-elect of the Tennessee Bar Association (TBA) during the group’s Annual Convention in Memphis last week. Barcus will advance to the presidency in June 2025. Barcus has been active in the TBA and other legal and community organizations for many years, serving most recently as TBA vice president, Second District representative on the TBA Board of Governors and as a member of the TBA’s Law Office Technology & Management Section and its Tort and Insurance Practice Section. She handles health care, litigation, product liability and professional liability matters as a shareholder with Lewis Thomason. Read more about her career in this press release.

Nashville attorney Edward D. Lanquist Jr. took office as president of the TBA last week during the group’s Annual Convention in Memphis. Lanquist has been active in the TBA and other legal and community organizations for many years. For the TBA, he most recently served as president-elect, after being elected vice president in 2022. He also served as general counsel for the association from 2016-2022. He is a shareholder in the Nashville office of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz PC. Prior to joining Baker Donelson, Lanquist co-founded a full-service intellectual property and technology law firm where he practiced for 30 years. Read more about his career in this press release.

The TBA offices will be closed Wednesday for Juneteenth, a federal and state holiday in the United States commemorating emancipation of enslaved African Americans. The TBA will reopen on Thursday at 8 a.m. CDT. Staff information, including emails and direct phone lines, can be accessed on the TBA website.

U.S. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Brentwood and Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota have introduced a bipartisan bill that would establish a national human trafficking database at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Tennessean reports that the program would compile state-level trafficking crime data, streamline connections with anti-trafficking and survivor support organizations, create incentives for state agencies to report data, and provide federal grants to support collection and reporting of data. A risk assessment index outlined in the bill is based on the success of a Tennessee data collection program facilitated by Belmont University’s Data Collaborative.

A new legal filing connects the former police lieutenant who filed a sweeping whistleblower complaint against the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) to records in The Covenant School shooting investigation, Axios Nashville reports. Some of those records were later leaked. A sworn declaration filed Friday morning puts Lt. Garet Davidson at the center of investigation but does not explicitly state that he leaked the records. In a sworn statement, a former colleague says that Davidson was tasked with storing a hard drive containing the shooting investigation file in a safe last year, and that he was the only person with access to that safe at that time.

The U.S. Supreme Court today declared unlawful a federal ban on "bump stock" devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns, The Hill reports. The case centered on how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) interpreted the National Firearms Act, which defined machine guns as weapons that can "automatically" fire more than one shot "by a single function of the trigger." The 6-3 ruling was authored by Justice Clarence Thomas. In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued the court had set aside the will of Congress to embrace an "artificially narrow definition" of a machine gun. In a concurring opinion, Justice Samuel Alito suggested that Congress could amend the law to successfully ban the devices.

The Tennessee Supreme Court has directed the Board of Professional Responsibility to hold a hearing and file a recommendation related to its petition to temporarily suspend Arthur C. Grisham Jr. On April 29, the court suspended Grisham for failing to respond to a complaint against him. On May 23, Grisham filed a response to the suspension. On May 31, the board filed its response. After considering the two filings, the court determined that “factual disputes warrant a hearing.”