Tennessee will sue the Joe Biden Administration for setting rules on the $3.7 billion in relief funding it wants to give the state.
Tennessee is set to get the funds from the federal government as part of the American Rescue Plan (ARPA). But to get the COVID-19 funding, states won’t be allowed to lower taxes on their citizens for four years, according to Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III.
Slatery joined a lawsuit with Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron to challenge the mandate. The suit, filed against U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, argues that “the tax mandate unconstitutionally usurps the authority of each state’s legislature to enact beneficial tax policies.”
The states have a constitutional right to implement their own tax policy.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery
“The states have a constitutional right to implement their own tax policy,” Slatery said in a statement. “We should not have to choose between accepting COVID-19 relief funds or surrendering to Washington’s attempt to override what only our elected officials in Tennessee are authorized to do.”
The suit calls the tax mandate “an unprecedented power grab by the federal government at a time when elected officials should be singularly focused on helping their constituents overcome the devastating effects of the pandemic. It usurps the states’ sovereign authority by coercing them into making the policy choices that a bare majority of Congress prefers, and a strictly partisan majority at that, without regard for the citizens of the states or the leaders they elect.”
“Kentuckians expect state tax policies to be set by the men and women they elect to represent them in the general assembly, and not as a result of an edict from the federal government,” Cameron said in a statement. “These COVID relief funds are essential to helping the Commonwealth and hardworking Kentuckians recover from the effects of the pandemic, and it is unconstitutional for the Biden Administration to hold the funds hostage if we don’t agree to Washington’s preferred tax policies.”
Read the entire complaint here:
