Court Cases

Blount Pride, Inc. (“Blount Pride”) planned a Pride event that would feature drag performances, including a performance by drag queen Flamy Grant. The event was to occur on September 2, 2023 at Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee. On August, 29, 2023, four days before the event, District Attorney for Tennessee’s Fifth Judicial District, Ryan Desmond, issued a letter to Blount Pride saying that he would enforce the anti-drag law that had been passed in 2022. In an effort to protect the free speech rights of drag performers, ACLU-TN and attorneys Brice Timmons, Melissa Stewart, Daniel Horwitz, Melissa Dix, and Justin Gilbert filed a complaint and emergency motion for a temporary restraining order on August 30, 2023 on behalf of Blount Pride and Christian artist and drag performer Flamy Grant. United States District Court Judge Ronnie Greer, in the Eastern District of Tennessee, granted the temporary restraining order and the Pride event proceeded as planned. Defendants then agreed to a preliminary injunction while a previously filed challenge to the anti-drag law, Friends of George’s v. Mulroy, continued on appeal in the Sixth Circuit.

Luc Esquivel is a 14-year-old freshman at Farragut High School in Knoxville, TN who has been looking forward to trying out for the boys’ golf team, but his plans were derailed when Gov. Bill Lee signed SB 228 into law. This law banned students from participating in school sports.

Christopher Bassett, Jr. was convicted for the murder in 2015 and in 2020, an amicus brief was filed on his behalf. The state introduced a drill rap music video featuring Bassett and six other men, following in a pattern of treating rap music as inherently incriminating.

In the summer of 2020, a bill was passed that effectively banned all abortions in Tennessee, causing ACLU-TN to file a lawsuit that would block enforcement of the bill that same day.

The Tennessee General Assembly passed a law that would require clinics that provide medication abortions to give their patients false and misleading information about a "reversal" to medication abortions, an unproven claim with no basis in medical research.