Several viral social media posts claim that Tennessee has banned same-sex and interracial marriages.
“Tennessee just passed a bill banning same sex marriage and interracial marriages. Hope you’re proud of yourselves MAGA women and white women who couldn’t be bothered,” reads one Threads post. “Here goes the United States into a Christo-fascist Taliban abyss.”
A similar post trended this week on Reddit. “The TN house just passed a bill designed to start a ban on same sex and inter-racial marriages,” it reads.
The claim is false. Earlier this year, Tennessee lawmakers passed legislation that allows individuals to decline to perform marriage ceremonies, but it does not ban same-sex or interracial marriage. Existing Supreme Court precedent protects the right to same-sex and interracial marriage nationwide, and in 2022 President Joe Biden signed a bill codifying the right to same-sex marriage into federal law.
In February 2024, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed House Bill 878, which amended a section of the Tennessee legal code specifying who can legally perform a marriage ceremony in the state. The bill added a single sentence to the section: “A person shall not be required to solemnize a marriage.” Under the updated language, no individual—including religious officials, state judges, and county clerks—can be forced to administer a marriage against their will. The bill does not explicitly address same-sex marriage, however, the clause allows officials to refuse to perform a marriage for any reason, including religious objections.
While the updated Tennessee law would allow a public or religious official to refuse to personally participate in a marriage ceremony for any reason, states cannot universally deny the right to marry to same-sex or interracial couples. The court ruled in the 1967 case Loving v. Virginia that restrictions on interracial marriage violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects marriage as a fundamental liberty, including the right to same-sex marriage. In December 2022, President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act, which further engrained broad protections for same-sex and interracial marriage into federal law.
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