A federal judge blocked a new Tennessee law that would require business owners who allow transgender people to use the public bathroom that matches their gender to post a warning sign.
The lawsuit asserts that the law violates the First Amendment and requests that the judge issue a preliminary injunction to prevent the law from being enforced while the lawsuit proceeds.
The seemingly short-lived law, which passed in April and went into effect on July 1st, requires that any “public or private entity or business that operates a building or facility open to the general public and that, as a matter of formal or informal policy, allows a member of either biological sex to use any public restroom within the building or facility shall post notice of the policy at the entrance of each public restroom in the building or facility.”
On June 25th, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee and the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the bill on behalf of Tennessee business owners Kyle Sayers, owner of Sactuary in Chattanooga, and Bob Bernstein, owner of Fido in Nashville.
The injunction was issued, with the decision reading, “The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits; if they are not granted a preliminary injunction now, they will be harmed in a way that cannot be repaired; and requiring the State of Tennessee to abide by the U.S. Constitution, sooner rather than later, vindicates the public interest in rule by law and the acceptance, by States, of constitutional government. The court, therefore, has little difficulty concluding that the preliminary injunction should issue.”
Alongside a helping of legal jargon, the court documents for the case showcase some pointedly barbed comments, including this one: “Why did the General Assembly adopt the Act, more than two centuries into the State’s existence and after seemingly many decades of public restrooms being commonplace in Tennessee, and in America, without the need for such signage? The court, of course, cannot purport to know all of the dynamics that go into each legislator’s individual decision to support a bill.”
The law’s sponsor, Representative Tim Rudd, does not exactly look like the exemplar of fact-based legislation. The documents state he was “concerned” that some “hypothetical sexual predators” would “take advantage of” some public restroom policies to “assault or rape” other restroom users.
The exchange continues: “Shortly before that declaration, Rudd was asked by Tennessee House Speaker Pro Tempore Pat Marsh whether the State was ‘having a problem with this now, that you know of . . . anywhere.’ Rudd was unable to provide any examples or evidence of such a problem.”
