Republican leadership could call every business that signs a letter threatening the state into their offices and tell them that every bill that their business or industry is interested in for the next year or two is dead on arrival. Period. End of the debate. You can return to your corporate headquarters now. Its the conversation every lobbyist dreads if they push legislators too hard.
The sign for a gender-neutral restroom is in the new library on the campus of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.NASHVILLE – The head of a conservative religious group calls it a “miracle” that a state House panel resurrected and passed a bill requiring transgender students to use school restrooms based on their birth gender.
But Family Action Council of Tennessee President David Fowler, who is marshaling support for the controversial measure, also frets Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration may be trying to sabotage a bill he says “protects the privacy of students.”
In an “action alert” sent to supporters Thursday, Fowler, a former Republican state senator from Signal Mountain, praised House panel members who voted Wednesday night to haul the bill back from a summer study committee.
“Yesterday was a miracle. House Bill 2414 that protects the privacy of students in the bathrooms and locker rooms of our public schools and colleges was dead as a doornail at 3 p.m., yet at 7 p.m. passed by an 8-4 vote of the House Education Administration and Planning Committee!” Fowler wrote to followers.