Gov. Bill Lee said he trusts a revised opinion from the Tennessee Attorney General on use of National Guard troops for police activities, despite a clause in the state constitution prohibiting such usage. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said Friday he trusts the attorney general’s revised opinion on the legality of sending National Guard troops to Memphis for police work, even though it conflicted with previous legal opinions.
“I think General Skrmetti’s a brilliant lawyer who understands constitutional law, and I suspect he’s got the right answer on it,” Lee said after a ribbon cutting for the Museum of Christian and Gospel Music in downtown Nashville.
Lee recently approved the deployment of an undetermined number of Tennessee National Guard troops to Memphis as part of a federal, state and local crime-fighting effort after President Donald Trump signed a memorandum allowing it.
Asked Friday about constitutional questions surrounding the National Guard mission, Lee said the attorney general determines constitutional questions and deferred to Skrmetti.
Early in the week, Democratic Sen. Jeff Yarbro of Nashville challenged the constitutionality of sending troops to Memphis for police action. Yarbro found that Skrmetti erased a 2021 legal opinion by former Attorney General Herbert Slatery, wrote his own opinion in January 2024 that meshed with Slatery’s legal view, then revised it three months later with wording that allows the federalization of troops for crime-fighting work.
The opinion by Slatery said only in cases of rebellion or invasion is the governor permitted to deploy the militia, a move the legislature must approve. That opinion no longer shows up on the attorney general’s website.
Yarbro said legal opinions by the attorney general are to be changed or removed only when the legislature passes new laws or a court makes a ruling that changes the law.
Skrmetti responded that Slatery’s opinion was withdrawn because it didn’t “accurately reflect the state of the law.” He did not expound on the meaning of “state of the law” or whether it had been changed by legislative or court action.
Lee gave an impassioned defense for sending troops to Memphis after telling reporters in late August that National Guard deployment wasn’t being considered.
Asked whether Trump or someone in the Trump administration told him to send troops to Memphis, he said, “When it became evident to me that the federal government and President Trump were willing to allow us to have access to the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, the U.S. Marshals Service, in combination with the National Guard, it made a lot of sense to use them at that point. And that’s when those resources became available.”
Since then, federal and state authorities have worked with the Memphis mayor, Memphis Police, Arkansas State Police and the Desoto County Sheriff’s Department in Mississippi, he said.
“Everyone who lives in that region understands how desperately we need to remove the crime element from the streets of Memphis, and everyone in those law enforcement agencies from the top of the federal government all the way down are working together to make sure that happens,” Lee said.
The governor is directing $100 million toward the effort through a safety grant approved by lawmakers this year. Some 300 Tennessee state troopers are working in Memphis as part of the stepped-up crime-fighting project, though reports show a significant decrease in crime in the past year.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX