Tennessee Teachers Fight Back Against Race Lessons Ban

Just over two years after Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a new law that restricted what can be taught in classrooms about race, gender and bias, a lawsuit brought by public school educators seeks to challenge its constitutionality.

In a filing brought by the Tennessee Education Association, a teachers' organization, along with five educators from the state on Tuesday, they said the ban placed vague restrictions on what teachers were allowed to reference—in an apparent violation of the Fourteenth Amendment—and which made the threat of disciplinary action greater due to its subjectivity.

The lawsuit calls for an injunction permanently suspending the law and for the Nashville U.S. District Court to declare it unconstitutional.

Newsweek reached out to the attorney general's office—which represents the Tennessee Department of Education and State Board of Education, both named in the lawsuit—via email for comment on Thursday.

A spokesperson told the Associated Press on Wednesday it had yet to see the legal challenge and so could not comment.

As well as challenging Tennessee's new school code, the 52-page lawsuit, if successful, could also have wide-ranging implications for similar laws in other states which could face their own legal challenges.

In Florida, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has spearheaded several laws in recent years that restrict what subject matters can be taught in class, including bans on the teaching of critical race theory and gender identity.

The laws have been viewed as a consequence of a culture war over the subjects and when children should be exposed to them. While advocates such as DeSantis say the laws give parents the ability to choose, opponents say they limit freedom of expression and education.

Both sides accuse the other of politicizing classroom content by ignoring certain points of view. Critical race theory examines societal structures through the lens of racial conceptions, but some argue it teaches that the United States is a fundamentally racist nation.

The Tennessee Education Association lawsuit argues that following the passage of the state's law, teachers were facing the threat of enforcement proceedings under "ill-defined standards, resulting in termination, license revocation, and reputational damage, for teaching lessons they have taught for years, taking students on field trips to sites of great historical importance, and answering students' questions about some of the most consequential issues they, and our nation, face."

It said the way the legislation had been drafted "fails to provide constitutionally sufficient notice of the conduct it purports to prohibit" and contained "no requirement of wrongful intent."

The Fourteenth Amendment, which the lawsuit appeals to, states that no law should "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

The court documents state that nearly a million public school students had been affected by the law, and cited examples of a field trip to a civil rights museum being replaced with a baseball game and a choir director who feared he could no longer teach his students about "the history behind spirituals sung by enslaved people."

In a statement on Wednesday, Tanya Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association, said the law "interferes with Tennessee teachers' job to provide a fact-based, well-rounded education to their students" and warned that students "will fall behind their peers in other states if this law stays on the books."

This chart, provided by Statista, shows the states that have adopted anti-critical race theory measures as of July 2023.

What Is the Ban About?

Under the current law in Tennessee, teachers cannot instruct that "an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously."

"Impartial discussion of controversial aspects of history" is still permitted, but schools found to have violated the law can have funds withheld by the Tennessee education commissioner.

When the legislation was signed by Lee, the governor told reporters that students should be taught about "the exceptionalism of our nation" and "that this country is moving toward a more perfect union" rather than "things that inherently divide."

The law passed largely along partisan lines, with most of the GOP caucuses in both the state's house and senate supporting the bill. At the time, Black Democrat lawmakers warned that it could make teachers fearful of teaching about racism's role in U.S. history.

However, while the issue has been bubbling under the surface for the past two academic years, a legal challenge has only been mounted now.

Amanda Chaney, a Tennessee Education Association spokesperson, told Newsweek that the organization had opposed the bill while it was being drafted, but that it had taken time to "go through the rule-making process."

Once implemented, the organization had heard concerns from teachers across the state about "how they can do their jobs and teach the state standards without putting themselves at risk" as well as the examples of the new law's effects mentioned in the lawsuit, she said.

These ultimately meant that the Tennessee Education Association "felt compelled to challenge the constitutionality of this law," Chaney added.

Update 07/27/23, 11:26 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Tennessee Education Association spokesperson Amanda Chaney.