Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has announced that Tennessee has received a payment of $146.1 million this year from major tobacco companies that joined the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. Since 1998, Tennessee has received $3.9 billion from the settlement. The landmark agreement resolved Tennessee’s lawsuit against major tobacco companies for violations of consumer protection laws and deceptive marketing practices that caused damages to the state, including increased health care costs. Read more about the settlement.

The ACLU of Tennessee has challenged a state rule governing what gender is listed on a person's driver's license, the Tennessean reports. The organization filed the lawsuit on behalf of a Monroe County transgender woman and asked the court to block the rule. In 2023, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a law defining a person's sex based on "immutable" physical and genetic characteristics at birth. That same year, the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security implemented the policy that it would not change driver's license gender markers to something different than the sex given on a person's original birth certificate. In addition to arguing that the policy discriminates, the ACLU says the department did not go through the appropriate procedures required for creating a new rule under state law.

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) new rules barring non-compete agreements for most employees, released yesterday, already have been challenged in two suits. The first was filed yesterday by a tax service in Texas. Today, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed in a different federal court in Texas. That suit alleges that the FTC lacks the power to adopt such sweeping rules. The ban, announced yesterday, is set to take effect in August, Reuters reports.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee has “unchecked authority” under Tennessee law to pick whoever he wants to run the state Education Department, according to a new legal opinion issued by Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. In the opinion, Skermetti writes: “… the General Assembly chose to grant the Governor unchecked authority to appoint the Commissioner of Education. It could have, but did not, subject the Governor’s choice to legislative confirm[ation]. Nor did it require a ‘certificate of qualification’ from some expert third-party board, as past laws had. In lieu of such checks, the General Assembly determined that the Governor should unilaterally judge who had the attainments necessary to lead the State’s Department of Education." The opinion came in response to an inquiry as to whether the legislature or any other party has the authority to challenge the governor’s choice for the position. Read press coverage from the Tennessee Journal.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in a challenge to the National Labor Relations Board’s reinstatement of seven terminated Memphis employees who were organizing a union at a Poplar Avenue Starbucks cafe. NPR has more about the case, which began in 2022 after Starbucks fired the employees, citing multiple violations of company policies. The workers maintain they were fired for trying to organize a union. Today's arguments were not about whether Starbucks illegally interfered with the union drive, but whether a lower court erred in ordering Starbucks to reinstate the baristas while their firings were being investigated. A ruling is expected by the end of June and could have far-reaching implications for labor organizing efforts across the country and across industries.

The Shelby County Board of Commissioners is asking Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert to formulate a corrective action plan to remedy problems found in a review of her office in March by the Tennessee Comptroller’s office. The Daily Memphian reports that the resolution seeking the corrective action plan was approved by the commission on Monday on a 7-1-1 vote with several commissioners out of the room. Commissioner Mick Wright sponsored the resolution; he has called for Halbert's resignation several times. Commissioner Britney Thornton voted against the resolution, saying she felt that Halbert was being unfairly singled out.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal involving a Pennsylvania state rule of professional conduct that prohibits lawyers from knowingly or intentionally engaging "in conduct constituting harassment or discrimination" based on race, sex, religion and other grounds. According to Reuters, the attorney challenging the rule argued that he risked violating it due to presentations he gives about offensive and derogatory language. In August, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the attorney lacked standing to sue because he had not shown that the rule threatened his constitutional free speech rights because it did not prohibit anything he planned to do. 

Judge Katherine Crytzer has postponed former federal prosecutor Kateri “Kat” Dahl’s wrongful termination lawsuit against Johnson City from mid-May to late October so she can have more time to rule on a dismissal motion. WJHL reports that Dahl's suit claims Johnson City violated the Tennessee Public Protection Act (TPPA) by allegedly firing Dahl in retaliation for insisting the Johnson City Police Department (JCPD) investigate sexual assault allegations against Sean Williams. The suit also names former Johnson City Police Chief Karl Turner as a separate defendant. Both sides filed summary judgement motions in January. Judge Crytzer noted that since then, the two sides have filed several additional motions that took time for her to work through.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has voted 3-2 to ban most noncompete agreements, which currently prevent tens of millions of employees from working for competitors or starting a competing business after they leave a job. The Hill reports that the rule would ban new noncompete agreements for all workers, and require companies to let current and past employees know that they will not enforce them. Companies also will have to throw out existing noncompete agreements for most employees, although in a change from the original proposal, agreements may remain in effect for senior executives.

The Johnson City Police Department is the subject of a federal public corruption probe related to its handling of an alleged serial rapist, new filings in an ongoing class action lawsuit indicate. Attorneys representing women, who say police conspired to protect their assailant, have turned over 520 pages of emails and attachments to the “prosecution team for the federal public corruption investigation of the Johnson City Police Department,” the filing said. The Department of Justice has, for months, declined to confirm or deny any investigation, and the existence of a federal criminal probe had not previously been revealed. WJHL-TV reports on the new legal filing.