Tennessee’s largest teacher organization has joined with five public school educators to legally challenge a 2-year-old state law restricting what they can teach about race, gender, and bias in their classrooms.
Their lawsuit, which was filed late Tuesday in a federal court in Nashville by lawyers for the Tennessee Education Association, maintains the language in the 2021 law is unconstitutionally vague and that the state’s enforcement plan is subjective.
The complaint also charges that Tennessee’s so-called “prohibited concepts” law interferes with instruction on difficult but important topics included in the state’s academic standards. Those standards outline state-approved learning goals, which dictate other decisions around curriculum and testing.
Tennessee’s largest teacher organization has joined with five public school educators to legally challenge a 2-year-old state law restricting what they can teach about race, gender, and bias in their classrooms.
Their lawsuit, which was filed late Tuesday in a federal court in Nashville by lawyers for the Tennessee Education Association, maintains the language in the 2021 law is unconstitutionally vague and that the state’s enforcement plan is subjective.
The complaint also charges that Tennessee’s so-called “prohibited concepts” law interferes with instruction on difficult but important topics included in the state’s academic standards. Those standards outline state-approved learning goals, which dictate other decisions around curriculum and testing.
Rep. John Ragan of Oak Ridge, one of the Republican sponsors of the legislation, argued the law was needed to protect K-12 students from being “indoctrinated” with social concepts that he and other lawmakers considered misguided and divisive such as critical race theory. That academic framework, which surveys of teachers suggest are not being taught in K-12 schools, is more commonly found in higher education to examine how policies and the law perpetuate systemic racism.
Tennessee’s GOP-controlled legislature overwhelmingly passed the legislation in the final days of their 2021 session, just days after the bill’s introduction. Gov. Bill Lee quickly signed it into law, and later that year, the state education department set rules for enforcement. If found in violation, teachers can be stripped of their licenses and school districts can lose state funding.
Only a small number of complaints have been filed and no penalties levied during the law’s first two years on the books. But Ragan has introduced new legislation that would widen eligibility for who can file a complaint.
The lawsuit seeks to overturn the law and asks for a court order against its enforcement.
The complaint claims the statute fails to give Tennessee educators a reasonable opportunity to understand what conduct and teachings are prohibited.
“Teachers are in this gray area where we don’t know what we can and can’t do or say in our classrooms,” said Kathryn Vaughn, a veteran teacher in Tipton County, near Memphis, and one of five educators who are plaintiffs in the case.
“The rollout of the law — from guidance to training — has been almost nonexistent,” Vaughn added. “That’s put educators in an impossible position.”
The lawsuit also charges the law encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement and violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids any state from “depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”
“Laws need to be clear,” said Tanya Coats, president of the teachers group known as TEA, which is leading the litigation.
She said educators have spent “countless hours” trying to understand the law and the 14 concepts banned from the classroom — including that the United States is “fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist;” or that an individual, by virtue of their race or sex, “bears responsibility” for past actions committed by other members of the same race or sex.
TEA says the ambiguity of those concepts has had a chilling effect in schools — from how teachers answer a student’s question to what materials they read in class. To avoid the risk of time-consuming complaints and potential penalties from the state, school leaders have made changes to instruction and school activities. But ultimately, it’s students who suffer, Coats said.
“This law interferes with Tennessee teachers’ job to provide a fact-based, well-rounded education to their students,” Coats said in a news release.
Teachers association sues state over payroll dues prohibition
Lawmakers combined deduction ban with teacher pay increase
The Tennessee Education Association sued the state Tuesday claiming a new ban on automatic payroll dues deduction to professional organizations is unconstitutional and singles out teachers among public employees.
Filed in Davidson County Chancery Court on behalf of association members and local education groups, the lawsuit names Gov. Bill Lee’s administration and the Department of Education as defendants and seeks a restraining order and temporary and permanent injunctions.
The Republican-controlled Legislature adopted the ban on automatic deductions to teacher organizations as part of a bill to raise the minimum pay for teachers this year. The law takes effect July 1.
Lawmakers considered separating the two provisions but ultimately kept them in the same legislation, making educators the only public employees statewide prohibited from using voluntary payroll deduction for professional associations.
“Sliding a payroll dues deduction ban in a bill to raise the minimum pay was a cynical attack on Tennessee teachers. The ban was mean-spirited, and the way it passed was unconstitutional,” Tennessee Education Association President Tanya Coats said. “We filed this suit to protect the rights of our members and highlight the missteps made by the administration when they pushed this attack on teachers.”
The association contends the section of the measure dealing with payroll deduction dues conflicts with the state Constitution at several levels, largely arguing that including it with a pay raise violates a “single-subject requirement.”
TEA also says the bill’s caption didn’t cover the payroll deduction ban and failed to disclose that it amends the state’s negotiation law for teacher union groups.
In addition, the teachers group says the law will repeal a provision allowing dues deduction to be negotiated and included in memorandums of understanding between school districts and teacher organizations. The association also claims the ban violates thousands of its members’ agreements because it bans the practice after they signed up for automatic payroll deduction.
Gov. Lee said Tuesday the measure was intended to give teachers a raise while making sure taxpayers dollars are not used “inappropriately.”
“Administration of a dues deduction program certainly costs,” Lee said while visiting a Gallatin elementary school to highlight teachers and summer reading programs for students.
Tennessee Education Association Spent Millions on Political Lobbying over Past Decade
he Tennessee Education Association (TEA) has spent millions on political lobbying alone in the state since 2011, having “squandered significant dollars in a lot of losing efforts across our state,” wrote JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, a non-partisan teacher association based in Nashville.
“Since PECCA was enacted in 2011, the Tennessee Education Association (“TEA”) has engaged in extensive political activity. Its public filings show that it has spent approximately $2,000,000-$3,500,000 in Tennessee on lobbying alone. See Smith Decl., Ex. D, TEA Political Expense Reports. And the TEA’s membership applications provide that ‘a portion of [each member’s] dues are allocated to the TEA-FCPE,’ an entity that engages in political activities, ‘including but not limited to, making contributions to and expenditures on behalf of friends of public education who are candidates for office.’ That amount does not include local or national contributions.”
“Teachers unions consistently rank among the top spenders on politics,” Bowman told The Tennessee Star Thursday. “Their goal is not improved public education, but rather power, money, and influence. Most of those dollars go to candidates on the left. It is easy to observe that teacher unions have donated millions to political campaigns, mostly going to Democratic candidates and committees.”
In his commentary, he observed:
According to the organization Americans for Fair Treatment (AFFT) in 2020-2021, the National Education Association “spent $2 on politics for every $1 it spent on representing its members.” They added: the “NEA spent $374 million overall, 18% of which went to political activities, while another 32% went to “contributions, gifts, and grants,” spending that is also largely political in nature.”
“Unfortunately, the teacher union in Tennessee has squandered significant dollars in a lot of losing efforts across our state,” Bowman told The Tennessee Star. “This is very problematic for all teachers who get painted with the liberal brush of union politics across the state.”
Keith Williams, executive director of the Memphis Shelby County Education Association (MSCEA), explained “the truth” about TEA in a video seven years ago in which he asserted the reasons why MSCEA disaffiliated from the teachers’ union, with emphasis on finances and “misinformation that has been spread” by TEA.
TEA is a state affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union.
At the NEA’s annual representative assembly earlier in July, union president Becky Pringle delivered an address that ended with a rant that claimed her union was engaged in a “righteous fight for freedom” and was changing “the world for our students.”
Pringle screamed:
I can hear Chief Seattle crying out to us, urging us to remember: when you know who you are, when your mission is clear and you burn with the inner fire of an unbreakable will, no cold can touch your heart, no deluge can dampen your purpose. NEA, you are the stars in the darkness. Your light will not be dimmed. Your purpose will drive you in our righteous fight for freedom because you know who you are. You know who you are. You are the NEA. Our mission is clear, we will advocate for the rights of education professionals and we will change this world for our students with an inner fire burning.
Patients sue Vanderbilt for releasing transgender clinic records to Tennessee AG
The AG’s investigation into the medical center’s transgender surgery billing practices allowed the state office to request access to a wide swath of patient records
Vanderbilt University Medical Center failed in its duty to protect transgender patients, caused them serious harm and violated state law and its own privacy policies when it yielded to demands from the Tennessee attorney general to turn over private medical records, a lawsuit filed Monday claims.
The lawsuit, filed by two patients seeking class action status, accuses VUMC officials of failing to push back on a series of demands for records from the hospital’s transgender clinic by Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti — which first came last November but only emerged publicly last month.
Detailing Tennessee’s recent history of laws aimed at curtailing LGBTQ+ rights, the lawsuit contends that Vanderbilt should have resisted some or all of Skrmetti’s demands, but did not
“VUMC was aware of the parade of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Tennessee over the past few years,” the lawsuit said. “Against that backdrop, its failure to safeguard the privacy of its patients is particularly egregious.”
Patients, the lawsuit said, now “feel for their safety.”
A statement released Tuesday by VUMC said the hospital system was “legally compelled to produce patient records.”
“The Tennessee Attorney General has legal authority to require that VUMC provide medical records that are relevant to a billing investigation of this nature,” the statement said. “We hope to reassure our patients and our employees that the decision to release patient records for any purpose is never taken lightly, even in situations such as this where VUMC was legally compelled to produce the patient records. ”
Skrmetti has called his demands part of a “run-of-the-mill fraud investigation” into potential billing irregularities. Yet the records his office has sought, in demand letters served on VUMC in November and March, encompass all levels of transgender care, including un-redacted medical records; staff, volunteer and doctor resumes; communications with outside therapists and emails sent by members of the general public to an LGBTQ questions portal. The demands also included records of individuals who were referred to the transgender clinic but never became patients.
VUMC has not yet directly responded to questions about which records it turned over to the attorney general, and those it has not.
In its Tuesday statement, VUMC said that its “legal counsel are in on-going discussions with the Attorney General’s office about what information is relevant to their investigation and will be provided by VUMC.”
The lawsuit alleges that VUMC breached its contract with patients by failing to safeguard their medical records, then failing to promptly notify them when they had been provided to the attorney general.
It wasn’t until the demand letters were filed in an unrelated lawsuit last month that patients received messages from VUMC that their medical records had been released to the attorney general.
“People should be able to feel comfortable sharing their personal medical information with their doctors without fear that it will be handed over to the government,” said Tricia Herzfeld, the patients’ attorney. “Vanderbilt should have done more to protect their patients.”
LIST: What’s included in Tennessee’s sales tax holiday
Be sure to know the list of exempt and not exempt items for the upcoming holidays.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - Tennessee is about to experience back-to-back sales tax holidays in 2023.
The traditional sales tax holiday on clothing, school supplies and computers is set for the last weekend of July and the three-month sales tax holiday on groceries will begin on August 1.
Tennessee Sales Tax Holiday Coverage
Tennessee’s Sales Tax Holidays
Tennessee’s traditional sales tax holiday on clothing, school supplies and computers is the last full weekend in July. For 2023, it begins at 12:01 a.m. onFriday, July 28, 2023, and ends at11:59 p.m. on Sunday, July 30, 2023.
For 2023, Tennessee’s General Assembly has approved a three-month grocery tax holiday on food & food ingredients which begins at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, August 1, 2023, and ends at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, October 31, 2023.
Apparel items priced at more than $100
Items sold together, such as shoes, cannot be split up to stay beneath the $100 maximum
Items such as jewelry, handbags, or sports and recreational equipment
School Supplies:
Exempt:
School and art supplies with a purchase price of $100 or less per item, such as binders, backpacks, crayons, paper, pens, pencils, and rulers, and art supplies such as glazes, clay, paints, drawing pads, and artist paintbrushes
Not exempt:
School and art supplies individually priced at more than $100
Items that are normally sold together cannot be split up to stay beneath the $100 maximum
