NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A invoice that may largely ban displaying pleasure flags in public faculty school rooms was handed by the GOP-led Tennessee Home on Monday after Republicans lower a heated debate brief.
The 70-24 vote sends the laws to the Senate, the place a remaining vote may occur as early as this week. The movement to chop off debate prompted Democratic Rep. Justin Jones, of Nashville, to yell that Home Speaker Cameron Sexton was out of order and ignoring individuals’s requests to talk. Republicans in flip scolded Jones by voting him out of order, halting his fast feedback.
Earlier than that, not less than two individuals towards the invoice have been kicked out of the gallery on account of speaking over the proceedings as Democrats and different opponents blasted the laws as unfairly limiting a significant image of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood in faculties.
“I’m proud after I stroll into the general public faculties in my metropolis, to see the LGBTQ flag within the school rooms, proudly put up by lecturers who perceive the struggling that lots of their college students undergo,” mentioned Rep. Jason Powell, a Nashville Democrat. “We must be welcoming and celebrating our college students, not hating on them.”
The laws says “displaying” a flag by a faculty or worker means to “exhibit or place wherever college students might even see the item.”
The proposal would enable sure flags to be displayed, with exceptions for some situations. Amongst these authorized can be the flags of the US; Tennessee; these deemed protected historic objects underneath state regulation; Native American tribes; native governments’ armed forces and prisoners of struggle or these lacking in motion; different nations and their native governments; faculties or universities; or the faculties themselves.
Different flags may very well be quickly displayed as a part of a “bona fide” course curriculum, and sure teams allowed to make use of faculty buildings can present their flags whereas utilizing the grounds underneath the invoice.
The laws units up an enforcement system that depends on lawsuits by dad and mom or guardians of scholars who attend, or are eligible to attend, public faculty in a district in query. The lawsuits may problem the show of flags by a faculty, worker or its brokers that wouldn’t fall underneath proposed standards for what can be allowed in school rooms.
Republican Rep. Gino Bulso, the invoice sponsor from Williamson County south of Nashville, mentioned dad and mom reached out to him with complaints about “political flags” in school rooms. When pressed about whether or not the invoice would enable the Accomplice flag to be on show in school rooms, Bulso mentioned the invoice wouldn’t change the present regulation about when such a logo may very well be proven. He mentioned the invoice’s exceptions may very well be utilized on Accomplice flags for authorized curriculum and sure historic objects that already can’t be eliminated with out intensive state approval.
“What we’re doing is ensuring dad and mom are those who’re allowed to instill of their youngsters the values they wish to instill,” Bulso mentioned.
The proposal marks one other improvement within the ongoing political battle over LGBTQ+ rights in Tennessee, the place the state’s conservative leaders have already moved to limit classroom conversations about gender and sexuality, ban gender-affirming care and restrict occasions the place sure drag performers might seem.
The Senate’s model of the invoice can be extra restrictive about who may sue over a flag, limiting it to that particular faculty’s college students, dad and mom or guardians of these college students or workers there.
Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union despatched a letter to city, faculty, and college district officers who’ve carried out or are contemplating flag bans or different pleasure shows. The group warned that underneath First Modification courtroom precedent, “public faculties might prohibit non-public on-campus speech solely insofar because it considerably interferes with or disrupts the academic surroundings, or interferes with the rights of different college students.”
Bulso contended that displaying the pleasure flag doesn’t represent protected free speech for varsity workers.