The Fred D. Thompson U.S. Courthouse and Federal Building at 719 Church St. in Nashville, Tenn.
Photograph by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout
A federal judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of Tennessee’s so-called “abortion trafficking law,” which subjects adults who aid minors in getting an abortion without parental permission to criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits.
In a lengthy opinion, U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger concluded the law is likely to be found to be an unconstitutional ban on protected speech about a procedure that, while largely banned in Tennessee, is legally available in other states.
The law outlaws the “recruitment” of a minor to obtain an abortion, a term the judge concluded was so ill-defined it could encompass a wide range of conversations about abortion, including simply telling a pregnant teen about all of her options.
“Tennessee, in other words, has chosen to outlaw certain communications in furtherance of abortions that are, in fact, entirely legal,” the decision, released Friday, said. “It is, therefore, a basic constitutional fact — which Tennessee has no choice but to accept — that as long as there are states in which abortion is permissible, then abortion will be potentially available to Tennesseans.”
From Judge Trauger’s decision:
“A teenager might be convinced to pursue an abortion by being told that she has great educational potential and should focus on her schooling, or she might be convinced by receiving information regarding childcare costs.
She could be convinced by being told, accurately, that there are many religious congregations that would not condemn her decision to terminate a pregnancy, or she might be convinced by having her exaggerated medical fears about complications assuaged. She might even be convinced simply by being told that, whatever she does, she is entitled to love and support.
Every such statement, if made to an unemancipated minor considering abortion with the intention of helping the minor choose the correct course for her—including, potentially, by obtaining a legal abortion—could lead to criminal prosecution under the recruitment provision.”
The lawsuit was brought by state Rep. Aftyn Behn, a Nashville Democrat and social worker, who has publicly advocated for abortion rights, and Rachel Welty, a Nashville attorney who describes herself as an “advocate for safe and healthy access to abortion care.” They are represented in the case by Nashville attorneys Daniel Horwitz and Sarah Martin.
Both women said they did not know if the information and advocacy they provided would be interpreted as “recruiting” a minor for abortion and subjecting them to felony arrest and prosecution.
Before filing suit, Welty sent a letter to district attorneys in Middle Tennessee seeking “assurances and/or clarification of their intentions regarding the enforcement of the law.” None of the district attorneys responded.
Behn, in an emailed statement Monday, criticized the bill as being “pushed by special interests and their bought-and-paid-for legislators to test how far they can go in undermining our constitutional rights.”
Friday’s preliminary injunction prevents the law from being enforced pending a trial in the case, which has not yet been scheduled. In issuing the order, Trauger rejected an effort by state lawyers to dismiss the case entirely or to confine her injunction against enforcing the law to only the two women filing suit.
“Welty and Behn do not just have a right to speak their message,” Trauger wrote. “They have a right to live in a state where that message can be repeated by all who find it valuable to all who wish to hear it. Otherwise, there would be no actual freedom of speech — just freedom of a few speakers to address a silenced populace.”
Trauger also shot down an argument by lawyers defending the law that it was rooted in the state’s “compelling interest in safeguarding the wellbeing of children and protecting the relationship between children and their parents.”
The law, Trauger wrote, “completely fails to explain how the recruitment provision is tailored to address … the wellbeing of Tennessee children. If anything, it is particularly striking for its lack of any provision focusing on the best interests of the minor at issue.”
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and X.
Shelby County continues to experience one of the highest HIV rates in the nation – designated one of 48 “hotspots” that are collectively responsible for half of all new U.S. infections.
Despite the urgent need for intervention, the Shelby County Health Department has had to forfeit more than $3 million of the $8.6 million in federal HIV prevention funding it has received in the past five years, according to information provided to lawmakers by the Tennessee Department of Health.
Credit: Tennessee Lookout
The funding came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which – until last year – provided Tennessee with annual HIV prevention funding, distributed through the Tennessee Department of Health to local health departments and nonprofit organizations. Between 2019 and 2023, Shelby County’s share of the funding ranged from $816,000 to $1.7 million annually.
But in four of the past five fiscal years, Shelby County failed to tap all available CDC dollars. The money can be used to purchase HIV tests, hire public health workers to administer them and perform contact tracing to identify potentially additional cases. Last year, the county drew down just $410,000 of its $1.5 million grant.
In an August 23 letter to lawmakers highlighting the unspent funds, Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Ralph Alvarado blamed CDC bureaucratic red tape and understaffing by the Shelby County Health Department.
A spokesperson for the Shelby County Health Department, in turn, blamed delays in executing contracts with the state health department, a process that also requires approval by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners and acceptance by county contracting officials.
The spokesperson also cited the Covid pandemic’s lingering impact over the past four years, as reassigned sexual health workers limited the number of HIV investigations funded by the grants.
Dr. Ralph Alvarado, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Health. (Photo: John Partipilo)
Losing out on $3 million in HIV funding in Shelby County has troubled advocates who work with limited budgets to educate, test, and provide resources to individuals impacted by HIV.
“Folks are making decisions between $3,000 medications and a roof over their heads,” said Cherisse Scott, CEO of Sister Reach, a Memphis reproductive health organization.
Sister Reach operates mobile vans that travel into underserved communities to offer testing and support. At $63 per HIV test, it’s a struggle to provide the service, she said. “The fact is those dollars have not trickled down” Scott said.
Rep. G.A. Hardaway, a Memphis Democrat, said Wednesday he planned to discuss the HIV expenditures with Shelby County health officials and local HIV advocates – and potentially the Tennessee Comptroller’s office, which is charged with investigating uses of public funding.
“Anytime we have federal dollars that cannot be spent in a timely fashion, we have to figure out why,” said Hardaway, who noted that local health officials may not have been in a position to responsibly spend money that came to them late in a grant cycle.
“We don’t want to get into a pattern where there’s too much red tape or we’re creating a situation where people are being rushed into spending in a way that would be ineffective,” he said.
Rising HIV rates
The letter from Dr. Alvarado outlining Shelby County HIV spending was sent in response to questions from Democratic lawmakers concerned that teens seeking HIV tests, along with other healthcare services, were being turned away from public health clinics if they did not have a parent’s permission.
Public health clinics began turning away unaccompanied teens on July 1st, shortly after Gov. Bill Lee signed a new state law requiring parental consent for healthcare services, the Lookout reported.
The state health department has since reversed course, instructing public health clinics to resume providing sexually transmitted disease testing and birth control to teens.
Rising rates of HIV in Shelby County sparked concern earlier this year when the Tennessee Department of Health and the Shelby County Health Department jointly issued a news alert. “Shelby County is experiencing a peak in a six-year trend of increasing HIV and syphilis infections,” Tennessee Department of Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Tim Jones said in the new release. “Testing is critical in reducing these rates.”
The release noted a 36 percent increase in HIV rates in Shelby County since 2018 and a 40 percent increase among those 15- to 19-years old between 2018 and 2023.
The news has prompted renewed action among nonprofit advocates to stem the growing rates of HIV.
Conflicting disease data
But in his August 23rd letter to lawmakers, Dr. Alvarado said the number of newly diagnosed HIV infections have decreased in the past 14 months – a message at direct odds with previous public statements from his department.
Dr. Alvarado noted there had been a two-year backlog in investigating HIV cases at the Shelby County Health Department. Once the backlog was resolved, he noted, “there was not a significant, acute spike or ‘outbreak’ indicated, as reported by the press.”
The letter does not make clear how resolving the backlog in investigations resulted in fewer reported cases. Investigations, which include contact tracing to identify and test intimate partners, may result in more positive cases rather than fewer. The state health department did not respond to questions about the investigations.
Dr. Alvarado provided lawmakers with charts showing the number of HIV infections in Shelby County decreased from 358 in 2022 to 329 in 2023. Among teens in the county, the number of new infections increased from 22 to 37 during the same time period.
The data provided uses infection numbers, not rates of infections – a typical public health metric previously cited in health department press releases about HIV prevalence in Shelby County that measures the number of infections compared to population size.
The department did not respond to numerous requests seeking clarity on HIV infections in Shelby County.
Dr. Alvarado noted that the decrease in the number of HIV infections coincided with the rejection of federal HIV funding from the CDC by the Lee administration. Last year, Lee announced he would forgo all future CDC HIV prevention funding in a move widely seen as a politically-motivated effort to block the federal dollars from also going to Planned Parenthood clinics in Tennessee.
The state has since allocated its own funding for HIV prevention efforts. Shelby County this year received $1.7 million in state dollars and has thus far spent $885,000 on prevention efforts.
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and X.
Amid a surge in HIV and syphilis cases in Shelby County, a group of Democratic lawmakers is pressing state health officials for answers.
Cases of HIV and syphilis in the Memphis region increased by 100 percent over the past five years, according to the Shelby County Department of Health, which has, thus far, not released total case numbers. Among young people aged 15 to 19, diagnosed cases increased 150 percent.
“This disturbing trend underscores the urgent need for effective public health strategies and resources to combat the spread of these infections,” read the letter, sent late last week.
The lawmakers are demanding an explanation from Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Ralph Alvarado about a series of state policy changes that they believe are exacerbating the crisis, rather than addressing it.
Among the changes: a new parental rights law requiring parental consent for teens seeking healthcare services.
The Lookout reported last month that the Tennessee Department of Health quietly instructed public health clinics to turn away teens seeking access to routine healthcare without a parent, citing new legislation known as the Family Rights and Responsibilities Act.
It’s a significant shift in policy for teens accustomed to seeking out birth control, sexually transmitted disease testing, pregnancy tests, and routine healthcare in public health clinics — which serve as the only accessible source of healthcare for teens living in some rural Tennessee communities.
Advocates have warned that the way the Department of Health is interpreting the new law — by concluding it supersedes prior laws that allow teens to access birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing — will deter young people from visiting clinics entirely, exacerbating outbreaks of sexually transmitted disease.
The Department of Health has not yet publicly acknowledged the shift in policy for teens and did not respond to a renewed request for information from the Lookout on Tuesday.
“There hasn’t been anything concrete in writing,” said Rep. Aftyn Behn, a Nashville Democrat. “There hasn’t been any communication from the commissioner.”
Behn said she is concerned that the growing influence of a parental rights movement in Tennessee, which has ushered in a series of laws in recent years giving parents more legal control over teens, shares blame for the surge in HIV and syphilis cases among young people.
“The actual, tangible consequence of the movement is this public health crisis,” she said.
The Democrats are also seeking information on how Gov. Bill Lee’s decision to reject federal HIV funding is impacting the current Shelby County outbreaks.
The reality is this is 2024. Teens are having sex. What they don’t have is the information they need.
Sen. London Lamar, D-Memphis
Last year Lee announced he would reject millions in funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for HIV prevention and treatment that previously went to Planned Parenthood clinics in Tennessee.
GOP lawmakers have, for years, fought to remove public funding from the clinics, which also provided abortion services until the state’s strict ban took effect in 2022.
Sen. London Lamar, a Memphis Democrat who signed onto the letter, cited another GOP backed measure as contributing to the current outbreak in Shelby County.
A so-called “Gateway Law” enacted by GOP lawmakers in 2012 requires abstinence-only sexual education in public schools.
“The reality is this is 2024. Teens are having sex. What they don’t have is the information they need,” she said.
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and X.
The late Rep. Barbara Cooper of Memphis gets vaccinated against COVID-19 in February 2021. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)
The former leader of Shelby County’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout has lost a legal bid to declare she was wrongly blamed for allowing hundreds of doses to expire during the pandemic.
Judy Martin, Shelby County’s former chief of nursing and immunizations, lost her job amid public fallout over the lost doses in early 2022.
Martin had reported 1,000 expired doses she discovered during an inventory. With even more doses set to go bad, she loaded hundreds of vaccines into her car to take to a local prison. But a snowstorm in Memphis scuttled those plans. She left 700 doses in the car and told nobody, legal filings said.
When news broke that Shelby County had allowed even more doses to expire than initially reported, Martin retired in order to avoid being fired.
“I learned that the information regarding the level of vaccine that expired in Shelby County was not accurate,” Mayor Lee Harris soon tweeted. “We have terminated the site manager who managed the relationship with the pharmacy and allegedly provided the initial false information.”
Martin sued the county alleging the tweet was defamatory and asserted her right to a “name-clearing hearing.” A federal court in Memphis dismissed those claims, siding with the county.
On Tuesday the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals again sided with the county in a ruling that concluded Martin had not suffered any harm from the mayor’s tweet. The ruling noted Martin had received community support amid the controversy, the nursing board took no disciplinary action against her and that she was able to land quickly in another job.
“Getting fired is unpleasant,” the ruling said. “And having that termination broadcast is even more so. But the Constitution of the United States says little about lost jobs and nothing about this one.”
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and X.
Nearly half of all Tennessee working families cannot afford the basic cost of living in their counties, according to new analyses of Census and federal economic data by the United Way of Tennessee.
The report examined the challenges facing households that earned more than the federal poverty level but, nevertheless, struggle to make ends meet.
While the number of households living in poverty decreased by nearly 5,000 across the state between 2021 and 2022, more than 34,214 households were added to the category of Tennesseans unable to pay for basic needs despite earnings that put them above the poverty level. In total, the report found that 1.2 million Tennessee households fall into this category.
The report concluded that the “survival budget” necessary for a family of four increased to $75,600 between 2021 and 2022. The budget includes the cost of housing, food, childcare, transportation and healthcare — all of which grew more expensive. In 33 Tennessee counties, more than half of all households failed to earn enough to meet their survival budgets.
While wages have increased in that time period, the 20 most common occupations in Tennessee still pay less than $20 per hour, the report found. These include jobs like sales, truck driving, administrative assistants and elementary school teachers.
Although poverty levels for Tennessee kids have shrunk, the report found that 38 percent of working Tennessee families with children at home did not earn enough to keep up with basic expenses.
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
Jace Wilder, education manager of the Tennessee Equality Project, says the new law “puts kids at risk of being abused, neglected and harmed again.” (Photo: John Partipilo)
With Gov. Bill Lee’s signature, Tennessee last week became the first state in the nation to establish the right of adults who claim moral or religious objections to LGBTQ identity to foster and adopt LGBTQ kids.
In the days since the law became effective, the Department of Children’s Services (DCS) has shelved a 10-year-old policy that said children in state custody must receive care that “promotes dignity and respect for all children/youth and families inclusive of their gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.”
That policy is now “under review and will be updated on the website once the review is complete,” DCS spokesperson Ashley Zarach said. New guidelines for how the state will navigate foster kids’ sexual orientation and gender identity in deciding where to place them are expected to be hashed out in the coming months.
The law’s passage has raised alarms among advocates for LGBTQ youth in Tennessee and elsewhere, who say it upends a central principle of child welfare systems: prioritizing the best interest of a child.
Instead, they say, the law gives greater weight to a prospective parent’s religious and moral beliefs over the need of a child for a loving, safe, and supportive home.
“What’s really sad about this is there’s a really high volume of LGBTQ+ kids in the foster system whose needs aren’t being met now,” said Molly Quinn, executive director of OUTMemphis. Among the LGBTQ nonprofit’s programs is one that aids 18- to 24-year-old LGBTQ youth facing homelessness, many of whom are former foster kids who faced a tough time in the child welfare system.
“The fact that the state would accept a family that is willing to discriminate into this broken system with such vulnerable kids is difficult to understand,” she said.
Best interests of the child?
The law, formally called the Tennessee Foster and Adoptive Parent Protection Act, was backed overwhelmingly by Tennessee Republican lawmakers, who two years ago also approved a first-of-its-kind law allowing private adoption and foster care agencies that accept tax dollars to reject prospective parents for a variety of religious or moral reasons, including their faith or whether they are LGBTQ.
In advocating for this year’s bill, Dickson Republican Rep. Mary Littleton characterized it as a necessary safeguard for families who want to offer loving homes to foster and adoptive kids but worry that they would have to compromise their faith or moral beliefs. Littleton also cited an urgent need for more willing families to step forward. Tennessee currently has 4,948 fully approved foster homes, but needs 400 more.
At the end of the day the state should be acting in the best interest of the kids and this doesn’t do this. This puts emphasis on beliefs of foster and adoptive parents.
– Laura Brennan, Family Equity
Littleton stressed that the new law says DCS is not precluded from taking a child’s preferences into account before placing them in a home.
“This bill does not disregard the values and beliefs of the child,” Littleton said, noting state child welfare officials can still take into account “a comprehensive list of factors” before placing any child in any home.
Advocates have pushed back to say that plain language of the law does not require the state to take into account the child’s own wishes.
They also criticized what they call a mischaracterization by the law’s supporters that prospective foster and adoptive parents in Tennessee have been rejected for holding anti-LGBTQ beliefs.
Parents in Tennessee have not been required to be gender- or sexual-orientation-affirming as a condition of becoming approved as a foster or adoptive parent. They have, however, been required to promote dignity and respect of a child’s identity if they take an LGBTQ kid in their home — until now.
DCS: parents preferences already taken into account
According to the Department of Children’s Services, prospective parents’ “preferences” have routinely been taken into account before a child is placed in a home, a spokesperson for the Department of Children’s Services said in a statement.
“Prior to this legislation, the DCS home study process included asking prospective foster and adoptive parents a series of questions to identify their placement preferences,” a statement from DCS said.
“Among those are questions regarding willingness to parent a child who identifies as LGBTQ+. Our goal always is to find the most appropriate placement to meet the unique needs of each child in our care,” the statement said.
Tennessee currently has 8,854 kids in state custody — 6,686 of them residing in foster homes. Up to a third of all foster youth nationwide identify as LBGTQ — often kicked out of home or winding up in state custody as result of mistreatment or rejection based on their gender identity, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Jace Wilder, education manager Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBTQ advocacy organization that has vocally opposed the law, pointed to his own tough childhood as an example of the importance of supportive adults in a child’s life.
Wilder, who is transgender, was raised, in part, by a friend’s parents after suffering abuse at the hands of his father, he said. His mother was disabled and frequently hospitalized.
Wilder said the abuse wasn’t solely because of his gender identity, but “it kind of gave him more ammo to use against me, so that did not help.” He was also able to connect with LGBTQ people for support in his teens and college years, he said.
“Without finding people that accepted me and really helped me grow, I think I would have been stuck in the position of being too afraid to transition, too afraid of being out,” he said. “I think this puts kids at risk of being abused, neglected, and harmed again.”
The nature of discourse over LGBTQ youth in Tennessee already exemplifies the need for safe and affirming homes, said Eli Givens, a college freshman from Tennessee who also serves as an advocate for the Tennessee Equality Project.
“It’s been just really unbelievable watching this session,” Givens said. “I’ve had adults telling me I need to go gas myself, that I was clearly molested when I was younger, just a wide array of threats.
“It’s bewildering that the same adults who told me to gas myself can adopt an LGBTQ child. That’s an extremely scary reality.”
Tennessee AG pushes back on proposed federal LGBTQ foster protections
The law was enacted on the heels of proposed new rules currently being considered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services related to the placement of LGBTQI+ youth in foster care. Among the proposed rules for all foster homes is they “establish an environment free of hostility, mistreatment, or abuse based on the child’s LGBTQI+ status.”
In November, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti led a 17-state coalition opposing the rules, saying in a letter to the federal government that they would shrink the pool of available foster families and “further divert resources away from protecting foster children from physical abuse and toward enforcing compliance with controversial gender ideology.”
Laura Brennan, associate director for child welfare policy for Family Equality, which advocates for LGBTQ families, said national advocates are keeping a close eye on what’s happening in Tennessee. The state’s 2022 law allowing publicly-funded private adoption and foster care agencies to exclude LGBTQ parents has seen been adopted by 13 other states, she said.
“At the end of the day the state should be acting in the best interest of the kids and this doesn’t do this,” she said. “This puts emphasis on beliefs of foster and adoptive parents.”
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
Ford BlueOval City, photographed while under construction in April 2023. (Photo: John Partipilo)
A high-stakes battle over the future of Tennessee’s wetlands has been playing out behind closed doors in recent weeks, with developers and environmental groups furiously lobbying on opposite sides of a bill to drastically roll back regulations.
The bill by Rep. Kevin Vaughan (R-Collierville) would limit state oversight over more than 430,000 acres of Tennessee wetlands. That’s more than half of the state’s critical ecosystems, which serve as a bulwark against floods and droughts, replenish aquifers and are prized by hunters, anglers and nature lovers.
Environmental groups warn that the proposed bill, if enacted by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee, could inflict irreparable harm on future generations.
“The proposed legislation favors the interests of developers over the safety of future flood victims and pocketbooks of Tennessee taxpayers,” said George Nolan, senior attorney and director of the Southern Environmental Law Center in Tennessee.
“Once a developer fills and paves over a wetland, it is gone forever. This is no time to repeal laws that have protected our wetlands for the last 50 years,” he said.
Vaughan called the measure an overdue check on red tape that costs developers time and money; he has denied weakened wetland regulation could lead to increased flooding.
The proposed legislation favors the interests of developers over the safety of future flood victims and pocketbooks of Tennessee taxpayers.
– George Nolan, Southern Environmental Law Center
He has accused state environmental regulators of “bureaucratic overreach” and “unnecessary inflation on the cost of construction” and pointed to the urgent need for relief from regulation given a building boom in the region he represents, where a new Ford plant is going up in Stanton just 40 miles from the offices of Township Properties, Vaughan’s real estate and development company.
“My district is one that is different from a lot of other people’s districts. We’re in the path of growth,” Vaughan told lawmakers.
Lee’s office did not respond to a question about whether he supports the bill.
West Tennessee Where Wetlands Abound.
There is perhaps nowhere else in the state where tensions between fast-tracking development and protecting wetlands are higher than West Tennessee.
BlueOval City, Ford Motor Co.’s $5.6 billion electric truck plant, has spurred a land rush in the region, with developers buying up properties, designing subdivisions and erecting apartment complexes at a fast clip ahead of its 2025 planned opening.
Restaurants, hotels, and grocery stores are springing up to accommodate an expected 11 percent increase in population by 2045 in the 21-county region surrounding the plant — making it the fastest-growing area in Tennessee.
West Tennessee counties also have some of the largest shares of wetlands that would lose protections under Vaughan’s bill.
The bill targets so-called “isolated wetlands” that have no obvious surface connection to a river or lake. Wetlands, however, rarely stand alone, often containing hidden underground connections to aquifers or waterways.
The 10 Tennessee counties with the largest share of at-risk “isolated” wetlands are located in West Tennessee, within commuting distance of the Ford plant.
Haywood County, where the plant is located, has more than 57,319 acres of wetlands that could lose protections under Vaughan’s bill — nearly 17 percent of all land area in the county, according to 2019 data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife National Wetlands Inventory compiled by the Southern Environmental Law Center.
The region also lies atop the Memphis Sand Aquifer, the primary water supply for urban and rural communities, and farmers in west Tennessee. Wetlands serve to recharge and filter water that supplies the aquifer.
“This is such a unique moment in west Tennessee history,” said Sarah Houston, executive director of the Memphis advocacy group Protect Our Aquifers, noting projected growth data that shows population increases of 200,000 or more in the next two decades.
“But when you’re removing protections for wetlands, you’re cutting out that deep recharge potential for all the water supply West Tennessee relies on,” she said.
Vaughn’s business among those to profit from building boom.
Developers who wish to fill in, build on or otherwise disturb wetlands must first apply for a permit from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, or TDEC, which can approve or reject the plans.
The process can prove costly; companies must hire lawyers, hydrologists and other experts before filing a permit. And if they get one, TDEC can require developers to pay expensive mitigation fees for disturbing wetlands — potentially adding tens- or hundreds-of-thousands of dollars to construction costs. The fees are used to preserve wetlands elsewhere, balancing out what is lost by a single project. The process can add months, or more, to construction timelines.
Vaughan has spoken openly about ongoing frustrations in his own business to comply with the state rules, describing TDEC regulators as overzealous in defining marshy or muddy lands that are created by tractor ruts or runoff as wetlands.
State records show that Vaughan as recently as December received state notice that a project he is spearheading contains two wetlands: one at 1.42 acres and another at 1.51 acres.
Given the presence of wetlands, “any alterations to jurisdictional streams, wetlands, or open water features may only be performed under coverage of, and conformance to, a valid aquatic resource alteration permit,” the Dec. 8 letter from TDEC to Vaughan said.
The project, a 130-acre site of the proposed new headquarters for Thompson Machinery, Vaughan’s client, will have to incur costly remediation fees should its permit to build atop wetlands be approved by TDEC.
It’s one of multiple development projects that Vaughan has been affiliated with that have butted into TDEC wetland regulations in recent years.
PAC money flows in from west Tennessee.
Vaughan also represented Memphis-based Crews Development in 2019 when the company received a notice of violation for draining and filling in a wetland without permission.
Vaughan did not respond to questions from the Lookout, including whether his sponsorship of the bill presents a conflict of interest.
He is not alone among developers in the region who are seeking favorable legislation during a period of rapid growth.
West Tennessee construction companies and real estate firms have spent big on a new political action committee formed in 2022 to influence legislative policy. The little-known Build Tennessee PAC spent $186,000 in the six months before the start of this year’s legislative session, the fourth largest spender over that period, according to campaign finance records analyzed by the Lookout.
Keith Grant, a prominent Collierville developer listed as Build Tennessee’s contact, did not respond to a request for comment.
The measure also has gained the backing of influential statewide groups, including the Tennessee Farm Bureau, the Home Builders Association of Tennessee, Associated Builders and Contractors and the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce.
Bradley Jackson, president and CEO of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, said last week the legislation — which Vaughan recently amended to make distinctions between different types of wetlands — represents a fair and balanced approach.
Jackson said the chamber convened a working group of five trade organizations last summer that concluded Tennessee’s wetland regulations need adjustment. “We feel this deal strikes a really good middle group. It provides the business community with consistency and certainty. We can ensure we’re being compliant,” Jackson said.
Vaughan offers ‘compromise’ amendment; environmental groups say it leaves wetlands unprotected.
The legislation is scheduled to be heard Wednesday in the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, with an amendendment that makes distinctions between wetlands.
The amendment would allow developers to build on “low-quality” wetlands and up to four acres of “moderate” isolated wetlands without seeking state permission.
Environmental groups say the proposal continues to place large pieces of Tennessee wetlands at risk.
Rep. Kevin Vaughan, R-Collierville. (Photo: John Partipilo)
“Vaughan’s current amendment is not a compromise as it requires no mitigation for low-quality wetlands regardless of size and no mitigation for large swaths of moderate-quality wetlands,” Grace Stranch, chief executive officer of the Harpeth Conservancy said. “The development resulting from those huge carveouts will likely cause increased flooding, a decline in water quality, higher water bills, and aquifer recharge problems.”
The measure has also drawn pushback from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.
“We at TDEC fear the proposal could result in greater back-end costs,” Gregory Young, the agency’s deputy commissioner, told lawmakers earlier this month.
Alex Pellom, chief of staff for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, cautioned the bill could lead to more flooding; the state has already suffered its wettest years in history since 2019, leading to devastating floods, billions of dollars in property damage and loss of life.
“We continue to work with the sponsor to discuss potential solutions,” Eric Ward, a TDEC spokesperson, said last week.
A Supreme Court decision limits federal oversight.
Vaughan’s bill was introduced on the heels of a controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that narrowed federal protections of wetlands, leaving it up to states to set their own rules.
The court concluded that only wetlands that have a surface water connection to rivers, lakes and oceans fall under federal oversight and are subject to Clean Water Act regulations.
There is little debate in the stormwater community about the value of wetlands as key instruments of maintaining water quality and mitigating damaging flooding.
– Aaron Rogge, Tennessee Storm Water Association
The majority of Tennessee’s wetlands — 432,850 out of the state’s 787,000 acres of wetlands in the state — do not have a surface connection to a water source, according to TDEC. It is these wetlands Vaughan is seeking to remove from state oversight and protection.
“This is going to be a major change to the way that the state manages its water resources, and likely one that we’ll look back on as a product of our current political climate,” said Aaron Rogge, a Nashville-based civil engineer who is also the current president of the Tennessee Stormwater Association.
“There is little debate in the stormwater community about the value of wetlands as key instruments of maintaining water quality and mitigating damaging flooding; in fact, many cities and counties choose to actively construct wetlands to manage their runoff,” he said.
Tennessee is not alone in targeting wetland regulation after the high court’s decision, according to Jim Murphy, director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation.
Legislatures in Illinois, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado are considering expanding wetland protections in light of the court’s decision while Indiana is among states considering a developer-backed bill similar to Vaughan’s.
“It’s a very fluid situation,” Murphy said. “In a lot of ways, it mirrors the politics of a state. But as you get down to state-level realities of what’s being lost, people are seeing what unregulated development means and often that means that their special places get paved over.”
Reporter Adam Friedman contributed to this story.
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
A ticketing system that restricts public access to the Tennessee House of Representatives is allowable under the state’s constitution, according to a legal opinion from Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti.
In practice, the ticketing system has meant that Tennessee’s super-majority GOP House can control its audience while conducting public business. GOP lawmakers get 75 tickets and Democrats 24, all for the west balcony overlooking the House floor. The east side of the gallery remains open to the media and public.
Sexton has defended the policy against criticism, saying representatives want to ensure visitors they know are arriving have seats, even if they are a few minutes late. He said lawmakers could also share tickets and noted that Congress also has a ticketing system.
Establishing a ticketing system falls within the authority of the General Assembly to regulate and manage access to the Capitol building, the legal opinion, issued last week, said.
According to the opinion, “the Tennessee Constitution contemplates that sessions during which the General Assembly conducts its business will be open to the public, but it does not guarantee the public a right of access to legislative sessions,” it said.
The Tennessee Constitutions says that “doors of each House and of committees of the whole shall be kept open, unless when the business shall be such as ought to be kept secret.”
The ticketing system, the opinion said, “would not run afoul of the “open door” provision of (the Tennessee Constitution) because it would not close the doors to the public; it would merely manage public access to the limited space that is available.”
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
Five years ago, a conservative think tank made an explosive revelation: Tennessee leaders had allowed a key anti-poverty program to amass a $730 million surplus —dollars from the federal government that never reached the struggling families for whom they were earmarked.
Fast forward to today: the state currently has a surplus of $717 million in the same federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program — known in Tennessee as “Families First.” The size of Tennessee’s TANF balance dwarfs every state but one.
Officials with the state’s Department of Humans Services say they are making progress in putting the unspent funds to use.
In the coming years, all but $190 million of the amassed funds will be distributed in the form of multi-year grants to community groups, transferred to a health department nurses for newborns program and paid to IT contractors to overhaul the agency’s aging computer system. New grant awards announcements are expected this spring.
“Over the course of the next three to four years we will see a consistent reduction in those unexpended balances as grant funding is distributed,” said Danielle Cotton, a spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Human Services, which manages the Families First program.
Critics, however, have questioned the lengthy timeline that has elapsed since the existence of the surplus was first brought to light in 2019, and the consequences of withheld resources for Tennessee’s working poor.
“The goal seems to be to give community grants to organizations when we know that TANF funding can go directly to the people who really need them,” said Sen. Heidi Campbell, a Nashville Democrat who has a bill this year to mandate cost of living increases for the cash payments given to families, similar to the automatic adjustments linked to the governor’s salary.
“These dollars keep piling up when we have one of the most food insecure states in the nation,” Campbell said.
TANF is a federal program that provides an annual block grant to every state. Its purpose is to help lift families with children out of poverty and towards self-sufficiency. Tennessee receives about $190 million each year. The federal government places no timelines on when states must spend their annual allotment.
There are approximately 29,000 Tennesseans enrolled in the program — more than 23,000 of them children, according to the most recent department data publicly available.
Each state sets its own priorities, but uses a portion of the federal funding to send monthly cash stipends to low income families with kids.Tennessee’s monthly cash payment for a family of three averages $387. It is among the lowest TANF cash payments in the nation.
States may also use the funding to provide grants to community groups that provide services to working parents — services that include child care, transportation and job training.
In 2019, the Beacon Center, a conservative-leaning think tank based in Nashville, revealed the state had routinely failed to spend its annual $190 million allotment for more than a decade, amassing the then-largest surplus in TANF in the nation: $732 million. (The unspent funds are reserved for Tennessee’s use by the federal government: they do not accrue interest for the state.)
An immediate public outcry followed. And after initially defending the program’s spending decisions, Gov. Bill Lee changed course, pledging in early 2021 to make TANF reform one of his top legislative priorities.
The resulting “TANF Opportunity Act” was enacted with bipartisan support later that year. It addressed the accumulated reserves by capping any TANF surplus at $190 million in “unobligated funding.” It also increased the then-average family-of-three payment from $277 per month to the current $387. And it set time limits for the state to spend its annual TANF allotment.
DHS officials noted last week that the current $717 million in reserves are all obligated or in the process of being obligated for specific current and future purposes, in compliance with the law.
“Every dollar of the $717.5 million has a budgeted line item,” Cotton said. Several community grants are “in the contractual process for final obligations.”
The 2021 legislation also created a Families First community advisory group tasked with recommending reforms and monitoring outcomes of the spending decisions.
DHS Commissioner Clarence Carter, tapped by Gov. Bill Lee to lead the department in January 2021, detailed his ambitious approach at the time.
“We are using the TANF program to redesign Tennessee’s safety net,” Carter said at the advisory group’s first meeting in August 2021.
“Instead of a knee jerk response to, OK, we’ve got $700 million and let’s just get that money out the door, folks came together and were very thoughtful about what’s the most impactful way we can put those dollars into play and really have better results,” Carter said.
At the outset, however, the department faced challenges in distributing the hundreds of millions of dollars accumulated in its reserves.
The goal seems to be to give community grants to organizations when we know that TANF funding can go directly to the people who really need them.
– Sen. Heidi Campbell, D-Nashville
The funding distributed from the TANF reserve to community organizations providing safety net services comes with strict rules that require agencies to follow complex federal mandates as well as show measurable improvements for working families.
Cotton, the DHS spokesperson, said only a few agencies were willing or able to take on the grants.
“There are a limited number of organizations that serve our fellow Tennesseans in the public safety net, and even fewer organizations that want to comply with the requirements and regulations of a federal grant,” said Cotton, the DHS spokesperson.
“As such we have noticed that we are often reaching the same or similar audience with more and more opportunities but very few new participants,” she said.
As a result, earlier this year lawmakers amended the TANF legislation, extending deadlines for DHS to distribute the federal funding.
Instead of a requirement that DHS fully expend its annual $190 million allotment every 12 months, lawmakers extended its spending deadline to 18 months each year.
The law also extended the original legislation’s three-year deadline for the department to develop, implement and evaluate pilot programs with communities organizations from three years to four years, or until the 2026-2027 fiscal years.
And instead of a December 2025 deadline for the advisory group to issue a report on TANF reform progress, the new law gives the group another year, setting a new December 2026 deadline.
“Frankly it took us a little while longer than I anticipated, than the legislation anticipated, to get these organizations up and running,” Rep. David Hawk, who sponsored the law, told a legislative committee last year.
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
Tennessee has one of the highest overall rates of child homicide in the nation but ranks even higher for the rate of kids killed by guns: one out of every four children who died in 2021 was killed by a bullet.
New data released Monday by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth provides a comprehensive portrait of the lives and deaths of Tennessee’s children and the economic and social forces that shape their childhoods, from poverty to educational achievement, access to healthcare and housing.
While child deaths by firearms are on the rise — Tennessee ranks 7th in the nation for children murdered by guns — youth in Tennessee are much more likely to be the victim of a firearm crime than to perpetuate one, the “State of the Child in Tennessee 2023” report notes.
In 2022, kids were perpetrators of 1,561 crimes involving firearms; they were victims in 4,490 firearm-related crimes, according to the report.
At the same time, the state’s largest cities — Memphis, Chattanooga and Nashville — all experienced a decline in the under-18 crime rate. Nashville and Memphis experienced some of the largest declines in youth crime in Tennessee, according to the report.
The report also noted that infant mortality from all causes has increased in Tennessee, after a slight decline between 2019 and 2022. Tennessee’s infant mortality rate of 6.6 per 1,000 surpasses the national average of 5.6 per 1,000.
“Our state does better when all children have access to the resources, supports and services they need to thrive,” said Richard Kennedy, executive director of the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth. “We hope this report can serve as a guidebook for where we as a state are getting things right and where we can focus our investment and attention to improve outcomes.”
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
