Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed HB1233, creating private right of action against schools over transgender students' bathroom access

On May 19, 2021, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed House Bill 1233 into law as Public Chapter 452, the "Tennessee Accommodations for All Children Act." The law defines "sex" as a person's immutable biological sex at birth, requires public schools to offer only limited "reasonable accommodations" — such as access to a single-occupancy restroom — to students, teachers, or employees seeking privacy in multi-occupancy restrooms, changing facilities, or overnight sleeping quarters, and creates a private civil right of action, with monetary damages and attorney's fees recoverable, against a school district that intentionally allows a person of the opposite sex into a multi-occupancy facility designated for the other sex.

The bill passed the Tennessee House 65-24 and the Senate 23-7 as amended, and took effect July 1, 2021. It is a distinct, earlier measure from Tennessee's later 2025 and 2026 facility-access laws, predating both and establishing the state's original private right of action against school districts over transgender students' restroom and changing-facility access.

Updates

2024-09-04 — Federal court dismissed equal-protection challenge to the law [3]

U.S. District Judge William L. Campbell Jr. granted defendants' motions to reconsider and dismiss, vacating a September 2023 order that had allowed the case to proceed. The ruling ended a 2022 lawsuit filed by the parents of a transgender third-grader in Williamson County Schools, which had argued the law violated equal protection and Title IX; the court held that the Sixth Circuit does not recognize gender identity as a protected class.