Tennessee GOP quietly overturns marriage equality by giving officials the right to refuse

Public officials in Tennessee can now refuse to grant a marriage license to anyone at their own discretion, for any reason.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed into law House Bill 878 on Wednesday, which took effect immediately. The bill — just a few sentences in length — only states that "a person shall not be required to solemnize a marriage." Only state notary publics, government officials, and religious figures can "solemnize" a marriage in Tennessee, according to state code.

None of the sponsors behind the bill have been made public statements on its introduction or passage, nor have they given comment to media organizations. The only known remarks regarding the law from state Rep. Monty Fritts (take a guess), who sponsored it in the House, are from February of last year, when he spoke to the state Subcommittee on Children and Family Affairs.

“As societal views change about what constitutes a marriage, officiants must be able to refuse to solemnize marriages that are contrary to their beliefs. The government has a responsibility to protect the exercise of religious beliefs," he said, via CNN. "Those with the authority to perform civil ceremonies would also be permitted to refuse to solemnize marriage for reasons of conscience.”

Camilla Taylor, deputy legal director of litigation for Lambda Legal, told the outlet that the law is "patently unconstitutional" and a clear effort to “roll back recent progress by the LGBTQ community.”

"Regardless of whether this bill was intended to target marriages of same-sex couples, interfaith couples, or interracial couples — it’s unconstitutional because the Constitution prohibits public officials from discriminating against members of the public based on their personal beliefs," she said. "Government officials can’t target people based on who they are."

While the law does not blanketly prevent LGBTQ+ couples from obtaining marriage licenses, Taylor said it could "require them to use a different process to obtain marriage licenses relative to everyone else." The legislative move follows Tennessee’s introduction of more anti-LGBTQ laws than any other state last year, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

"The effect of forcing same-sex couples to go through a different process relative to everyone else — whether by demanding that they use a different door, or that they wait for a different public official to issue them a license — [is] to stigmatize them and communicate that their government thinks their marriages are less worthy than everyone else’s," she continued.