A Tennessee Republican is aiming to challenge two landmark Supreme Court decisions with a series of proposed anti-LGBTQ+ state laws.

As the Nashville Banner reports, state Rep. Gino Bulso (R) filed three anti-LGBTQ+ bills this week, two of which challenge the Supreme Court’s decisions establishing the rights of same-sex couples to legally marry and that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects U.S. employees from discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

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Bulso went so far as to title his House Bill 1472 the “Banning Bostock Act.” The bill, according to the Banner, would explicitly exclude sexual orientation and gender identity from Tennessee’s definition of sex-based discrimination, in defiance of the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision.

Tennessee already has a law on the books that critics say could challenge Obergefell v. Hodges. In 2024, Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed H.B. 878, which allows public officials to refuse to “solemnize” — i.e. perform — same-sex marriage ceremonies without providing a reason. (Officials are still required by law to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.)

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Bulso’s H.B. 1473, meanwhile, purports that “Private citizens and organizations are not bound by the Fourteenth Amendment or by the Supreme Court’s purported interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in Obergefell v. Hodges,” and thus are not “required to recognize a marriage or a purported marriage between individuals of the same sex, notwithstanding any other law.”

A third bill, H.B. 1474, or the “No Pride Flag or Month Act,” would do just what its title suggests. In addition to Pride flags, it would ban from state property “any object, image or representation that uses the word ‘pride’ in a manner intended to convey support for or approval of lesbianism, homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism, gender non-conforming behavior or individuals who engage in such conduct,” and any official recognition of Pride month.

As Tennessee Pride Chamber legislative counsel Tom Lee told the Banner, Bulso has tried and failed to push similar legislation through before. Likewise, Dahron Johnson, co-chair of the Tennessee Equality Project, suggested that the bills may be largely political theater aimed at “advertising” Bulso’s positions.

However, Johnson warned that Tennessee lawmakers seem to have been emboldened by the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti, which upheld the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors. The state’s legislature appears to be repeatedly trying to end federal LGBTQ+ rights, according to Johnson, aiming for another case that will bring LGBTQ+ rights before the Supreme Court’s conservative super majority.

“And it’s not just about the end effect of the bills, but also the damaging language, the rhetoric, the condemning language against a group of people,” Johnson told the Banner. “And it’s absolutely a concern when we know that there are willing ears and ready pens at the federal level, who can mimic this in national policy.”

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