New Year Ahead: Looking to the Legislative Season with Chris Sanders

By Elizabeth Cannan-Knight

Editor’s Note: This information was accurate as of original publication date of February 10, 2024. For updates, please visit tnep.org.

It’s no secret that 2023 was a difficult year for queer people — especially queer children — with bills such as HB1 outlawing hormone replacement therapy for transgender minors being passed. Many queer people have looked to 2024 with dread, worrying that additional targeted bills will be passed this session to disenfranchise and harm them.

Connect reached out to Chris Sanders, director of the Tennessee Equality Project, to get his opinion on 2023, what we’ve learned, and how it could apply to 2024.

Chris confirmed the conclusion that many in the community had come to — last year was “the worst one ever” concerning anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. He also made clear that any speculation on how this year would turn out was just that and that we will not know for sure what the climate will be until after the filing session is done, which ends at the end of January for the Tennessee House and a few weeks later for the Senate.

Chris noted that since this is a major election year, legislators will try to keep the session short to better allocate their resources to their campaigns. This could also affect the energy level for these bills, as legislators will be less interested in advancing their policies when their jobs are at stake, especially in more hotly contested districts. That is not to say this year will have no bills at all. In fact, three new bills at the time of writing warrant attention.

The first of these bills, HB1605, states “an LEA [Local Educational Agency] or public charter school shall not display any flag other than the United States flag and the official Tennessee state flag on or in a public school.” This has the potential of completely banning Pride flags in classrooms and across public schools in Tennessee, part of a concerted attack on all LGBTQ+-associated items in education settings.

Another bill, HB1614, also known as the Protect Tennessee Minors Act, does not reference queer topics specifically but contains a host of language that has traditionally been used in the past as a dog-whistle against queer expression with regards to minors, with a heavy focus on sexually explicit material. Chris said that this could simply be as it is presented, that being a bill to protect children, but it could very readily be twisted to push back against online queer programming and safe spaces for queer children.

Finally, HB1632 gives even more power to Moms for Liberty-type figures who would see to it that no child in the public education system has access to materials that they personally deem inappropriate, by amending the Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022 to allow parents of children who attend or are eligible to attend public or charter schools in Tennessee to sue the school district for possessing material that goes against the guidelines set out in the original law. 

As Chris explained, “HB1632 is another effort to make our public schools afraid to carry diverse materials, including LGBTQ stories. Schools are underfunded in Tennessee and the threat of

lawsuits will put them in a real bind if they want to provide a quality education. Another outrageous feature of the bill is that one need not have children in a particular public school district to file suit. Under this bill, having children who are eligible to attend is enough to give one standing. This bill expands the power of fear.”

As far as what could come next, Chris offered a few ideas. There are a range of potential targets for Republican lawmakers this year, including an attack on adult gender-affirming care, which could take form by making a 25-and-under ban or by restricting access in other ways such as when Florida prohibited nurse practitioners from administering gender-affirming care.

Another potential is the return of bills tabled in 2023. This includes bills that set out restrictive family rights and responsibilities as well as some making same-sex marriages more difficult. One bill that could make a comeback is the infamous TennCare bill, which prohibits TennCare insurance from being used to cover the costs of lifesaving gender-affirming care.

However, all is not lost. There are talks of potentially positive bills for the queer community, including a broad transgender rights bill, a bill that restores certain parts of the rights taken away from trans youth by HB1’s gender-affirming care ban, as well as one restoring HIV funding to the state. 

These bills as well as the diligence of our few but mighty trans-friendly lawmakers serve as a reminder that even in these states of oppression and depression, there is hope for the future, and the Tennessee Equality Project is dedicated to fighting back against harmful, misinformed legislation however they can.