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House Bill 1111, officially called An act to amend Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 1, Chapter 3, relative to the construction of statutes, is a 2017 law in the state of Tennessee that added the following text: "undefined words shall be given their natural and ordinary meaning, without forced or subtle construction that would limit or extend the meaning of the language, except when a contrary intention is clearly manifest."[1]
On March 26, 2017, the Tennessee House of Representatives passed HB 1111, with 70 yeas and 23 nays. On April 27, 2017, the Tennessee Senate passed HB 1111, with 23 yeas, 6 nays, and 1 did not vote. On May 5, 2017, Governor Bill Haslam signed HB 1111 into law as Pub. Ch. 302.[2]
The bill was sponsored by Andrew Farmer, a Republican member of the Tennessee House of Representatives and John Stevens, a Republican member of the Tennessee Senate.[3] Both Farmer and Stevens said the bill did not target the LGBT community.[3] However, David Fowler of the Family Action Council of Tennessee hoped the bill would force judges to define marriage as between a man and a woman.[3] Meanwhile, the Human Rights Campaign said it was an attempt to challenge Obergefell v. Hodges.[4] Additionally, the Tennessee Equality Project called it the "LGBT erasure bill".[5] The Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union called for the governor to veto the bill.[3]
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