Tennessee on Thursday released a redacted version of its new execution manual, blacking out sporadic titles and team names throughout the trimmed-down document that now provides vague guidelines and omits previously detailed steps on carrying out the death penalty. The Department of Correction initially would not hand over the manual when pressed by the AP, arguing that the government had to keep the entire manual secret to protect the identities of the executioner and other people involved. On Thursday, the agency reversed course and provided the AP with a copy of the lethal injection protocol.

The 44-page manual is noticeably shorter than the 2018 version the state had been operating under, which contained nearly 100 pages, including 11 detailing how lethal injection drugs should be procured, stored, and administered. The failure to follow those procedures forced Republican Gov. Bill Lee in 2022 to call a last-minute halt to the execution of Oscar Smith and place a moratorium on new executions while the process was under review. An independent report later found that none of the drugs prepared for the seven people executed since 2018 had been fully tested as required by the manual. The report also revealed that officials considered trying to acquire drugs through a veterinarian or even importing them internationally. Later, the state Attorney General’s Office conceded in court that two of the people most responsible for overseeing the drugs “incorrectly testified” that they were being tested as required.

The new manual contains a single page on the lethal injection chemicals with no specific directions for testing them. It removes a requirement that the drugs come from a licensed pharmacist, per the AP. Yet the new protocol has several additions, including now authorizing the state to deviate from the protocol whenever the correction commissioner deems it necessary. The 2018 protocol required a series of three drugs administered in sequence; the version unveiled last week requires a single dose of pentobarbital. And the people most responsible for carrying out the execution will now be outside contractors. The manual requires an IV team and a physician who are not Department of Correction personnel.

(More death penalty stories.)

Rules created by the Biden administration prohibiting schools and universities from discriminating against transgender students were struck down in a Thursday court ruling that applies nationwide.

Tennessee was one of six states that sued to block the rules from going into effect.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti called the ruling “a huge win for Tennessee, for common sense, and for women and girls across America.”

“The court’s ruling is yet another repudiation of the Biden administration’s relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology through unconstitutional and illegal rulemaking,” Skrmetti said in a statement. “Because the Biden rule is vacated altogether, President Trump will be free to take a fresh look at our Title IX regulations when he returns to office next week.”

The regulations, which had already been blocked from implementation by a preliminary order, were released by the U.S. Department of Education in April as part of the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX, a federal law that bars discrimination on the basis of sex in schools that receive federal funding. The new regulations expanded the umbrella of sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of “sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.”

Under the updated rules, a school would violate the law if it “denies a transgender student access to a sex-separate facility or activity consistent with that of a student’s gender identity.”

The judge who issued the ruling, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky Chief Judge Danny C. Reeves, pulled few punches in his opinion, calling the updated interpretation “unlawful on numerous fronts” and saying the new rules had an “arbitrary nature.”

Reeves saw the updated regulations as a departure from Title IX’s original purpose and longstanding interpretation, writing “Title IX does not encompass the issue of gender identity at all.”

“Put simply, there is nothing in the text or statutory design of Title IX to suggest that discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ means anything other than it has since Title IX’s inception—that recipients of federal funds under Title IX may not treat a person worse than another similarly-situated individual on the basis of the person’s sex, i.e., male or female,” Reeves wrote.

Reeves claimed, despite the U.S. Department of Education’s statements in court to the contrary, that the rules would “require Title IX recipients, including teachers, to use names and pronouns associated with a student’s asserted gender identity,” a flashpoint in the ongoing culture war around LGBTQ+ people, youth in particular.

“President Biden’s radical Title IX rewrite is dead and common sense is ALIVE!” Skrmetti wrote on the social media site X, responding to a post from conservative media personality Clay Travis.

While the protections for gender identity discrimination are the most politically charged, Reeves’ order tosses out the updated regulations in their entirety. The rules made other changes to Title IX, including the system for handling sexual assault complaints, for example.

Shiwali Patel, an attorney in the Obama administration’s Office for Civil Rights who resigned from the Education Department in Trump’s first term, called the judge’s decision Thursday a “huge setback” that will ultimately harm students.

“I hope that they will continue to try to fight back,” she said of the Biden team. “But the reality is that there really isn’t much time for it left.”

The Department of Education did not immediately provide a comment.

Zachary Schermele of USA TODAY contributed to this report.

Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him at emealins@gannett.com.

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