Tennessee State Representative Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) said he expects his bill prohibiting the displaying of certain flags on or in a public school, including LGBTQ pride flags, to soon pass the Senate and be signed into law by Governor Bill Lee.
Bulso’s bill, HB 1605, passed the House of Representatives last week by a 70-24 vote.
In addition to prohibiting certain flags outside of the permitted list included in the text of the legislation, Bulso’s bill also grants parents or guardians of students who are enrolled in and attends or of children who are eligible to enroll in and attend public schools legal standing to file a civil action against the school in a chancery court to enforce the bill.
“Typically any time you have a violation of a law and someone files a lawsuit in a civil court to redress the violation, the first thing the court will look at is whether the person bringing the case has the authority to bring it,” Bulso explained on Thursday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy.
“That’s this concept called ‘standing.’ Does the person bringing the case have standing? So what we did in this bill is to include a provision that makes it clear and unequivocal that parents have standing to bring an action if they have a school or a teacher or a counselor who was displaying the pride flag in the classroom, despite the passage of this law,” he said.
Bulso said he believes Governor Lee will sign his bill into law as it protects “parental choice” by “making sure parents retain rights, especially when it comes to the health or education of their children.”
“I think the governor is someone who’s obviously been very conscious of this concept of parental choice and making sure parents retain rights, especially when it comes to the health or education of their children.
“At its core, all this bill really seeks to do is to make sure parents remain in control of what values are being instilled in their children, because obviously the values that are represented by the pride flag are values that many parents disagree with…So, I do think that ultimately governor Lee is going to be completely on board with this because it vindicates parental rights,” Bulso said.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
