The Tennessee House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that aims to undermine same-sex marriage.
House Bill 1473 passed on the floor 68-24 along partisan lines, and state Senate committees will now take up the effort. The legislation is sponsored in that chamber by Sen. Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma). The bill explicitly works to circumvent the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the 2015 Supreme Court of the United States decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage.
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House sponsor Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) claims the bill is meant to only clarify the impact of the amendment and the SCOTUS ruling on public versus private entities regarding marriage.
House Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. John Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville) raised “sincere concerns” about the bill, calling it a “slap in the face of the very spirit of the 14th Amendment.” Clemmons argued that any disagreement with the ruling should be argued in the courts and not in the state legislature. Clemmons and Bulso are both lawyers by trade.
“The 14th Amendment covers more than marriage,” Clemmons said. “The caption of this bill says it's only relative to marriage. So because of that, this bill — the substance of this bill, the language of this bill — exceeds the caption, thereby violating the Tennessee Constitution relative to captions in the state of Tennessee. Therefore, this bill is inherently flawed. Whether you agree with it or disagree with it, it will necessarily be challenged, because it blatantly violates the Constitution with regard to the limitations on captions.”
Bulso argued that the 2015 SCOTUS decision “overstepped its bounds and invented this right of marriage of individuals of the same sex.”
Bulso was backed by Rep. Monty Fritts (R-Kingston), a 2026 gubernatorial candidate who has said he thinks women should face the death penalty for obtaining abortions. Fritts said on the House floor that “the court decided to redefine something that almighty God had not given that court the authority to define.” In 2024, Fritts sponsored a bill, which Gov. Bill Lee signed into law, that would allow officiants to refuse to officiate a marriage based on moral or religious objections.
Clemmons unsuccessfully moved to have the bill returned to the House Judiciary Committee, while Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) questioned Bulso about the potential negative impacts to or outright discrimination of same-sex couples in Tennessee.
Those concerns were echoed by Tennessee Equality Project executive director Chris Sanders, who led several dozen protesters in the Capitol. Sanders told reporters following the vote that Bulso is “using this bill to chip away at the Obergefell decision” in an effort to get SCOTUS to reexamine the 2015 ruling.
Tennessee Equality Project executive director Chris Sanders speaks to reporters in the state Capitol, Feb. 19, 2026
“The issue is probably not with large institutions, large banks, large health care facilities, but in some of our rural areas in Tennessee, where there are fewer institutions,” Sanders said. “They're smaller. They're not multi-state, multinational. They might be a community bank or a community clinic. In those cases, we are worried that they might exercise some kind of discretion, based on this bill, not to treat people as married who are legally married in Tennessee or elsewhere. No one who is legally married in this state should have their relationship questioned and belittled as it has been on the floor of the Tennessee House today.”
Sanders also questioned whether the bill — which specifically relates only to marriage — could potentially impact other civil rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
“Does it eventually get into questions of, ‘Well, maybe I don't recognize your citizenship, maybe I don't recognize your marriage, and you're not even a same-sex couple,’” said Sanders. “Maybe it gets into all kinds of other guarantees that the 14th Amendment has made possible.”
“As we always say, love wins,” he said. “Sometimes it suffers a defeat here and there, but ultimately, we believe that love will prevail. We may just have a long, hard fight of it in this state.”
