by Aaron Gulbransen
Right now, while you’re reading this, left-wing activist groups are using a Tennessee law to dismantle every conservative policy victory that our state has achieved in the last decade. They’re doing it in courtrooms because they can’t win at the ballot box. And the worst part? We never saw it coming. I have spent years advocating for conservative legislation, organizing grassroots conservatives, and working with the conservative supermajority that passed these laws. What I’m about to tell you should make every one of us angry: a single Tennessee law has become the most powerful weapon that the radical left has ever had against conservative governance in this state. It’s called TCA § 1-3-121.
Here’s how it happened. In 2018, the General Assembly passed § 1-3-121 with the reasonable goal to make it easier for citizens to challenge government overreach. That’s a cause conservatives believe in. But the court interpreted the law so broadly that it effectively gutted Tennessee’s sovereign immunity – the centuries-old legal doctrine that limits when and how the state can be dragged into court. The result? Tennessee is now the only Republican-led state in the country operating under such an expansive legal framework. The left knows it. They have constantly exploited it. And you are paying for it.
Groups like the ACLU, funded by out-of-state liberal billionaires and operating far from Tennessee, have used § 1-3-121 to challenge our protections for the unborn, our voter-restoration laws, our redistricting maps, our marijuana regulations, and our Governor’s decision to deploy the National Guard to Memphis. These groups don’t need to show they were actually harmed. They don’t need to use available legal channels. They just need to drive straight to Davidson County, where they know they’ll find a sympathetic courtroom and ask for an emergency injunction that freezes state law before a single Tennessean can push back.
Think about what that means in practice. The law protecting unborn life in Tennessee has been under assault in a Davidson County courtroom since the day it passed. The Governor’s deployment of the National Guard to stop crime in Memphis is currently being challenged in court by a county mayor and leftist state legislators. The redistricting maps drawn by our elected representatives were frozen at the request of plaintiffs who didn’t like the outcome. These aren’t hypotheticals. They are happening right now in Tennessee courtrooms because of a law most conservatives have never heard of.
I know some pretend conservative grifters and even actual conservatives have joined with the radical left and have raised concerns about repealing § 1-3-121. I want to say something directly to those like-minded friends: I remember when conservatives celebrated this law. It felt like a win – a way to hold a bloated bureaucracy accountable. What none of us anticipated was that we were handing the left a master key to every courthouse in the state. Look at who is actually using this law. Look at the cases, plaintiffs, and who is funding them. The organizations invoking § 1-3-121 today are not small-government freedom fighters. They are the ACLU, Soros-funded orgs, and their allies that are running a coordinated legal campaign to reverse conservative victories.
Take the abortion litigation. The legislature has already amended the very statute being challenged in Phillips. That case should be over. Instead, the leftist show trial that will occur in April rolls on. Think about what that week will look like. Every national media outlet in the country will descend on Nashville. Conservative, Trump-supporting Tennessee will be cast as the villain. Activists will line the courthouse steps. The left will raise millions of dollars in a single news cycle, funded by the spectacle of dragging our state through a case that should have been dismissed. And the law that made all of it possible is one we put on the books ourselves. That’s not judicial accountability. That’s a shakedown that we are all bankrolling. It is our responsibility to fix it.
The financial cost alone should alarm every Tennessee taxpayer. In 2025 alone, the Attorney General’s Office spent nearly $1 million in out-of-pocket costs and thousands of attorney hours defending these cases. That’s money that could have built roads, funded classrooms, or stayed in Tennessee taxpayers’ pockets. Instead, it went to lawyers fighting lawsuits brought by organizations that lost at the ballot box and decided the courts were a better bet. This is the same garbage that President Trump has to deal with at the federal level.
I’ve heard the concern that this bill goes too far. It doesn’t. SB1958/HB1971 simply winds the clock back to 2018, nothing more. Before 2018, Tennesseans regularly and successfully challenged unconstitutional government action, and that will not change. What changes is this: leftist out-of-state organizations and uninjured plaintiffs will no longer be able to skip established legal channels and hand a Davidson County judge the power to freeze state law on behalf of groups that were never harmed in the first place. Courts should function as courts – not as backup legislatures where well-funded interest groups relitigate the outcomes of elections that they lost.
I have spent years of my life working to deliver conservative victories in this state. I’ve spent many nights and weekends fighting for our shared conservative principles. I’ve driven thousands of miles driven and have had countless conversations with voters who believe, like I do, that elections should mean something. When a court can erase the work of a conservative supermajority at the request of a leftist out-of-state group that has lost every election it tried to influence, elections stop meaning anything.
SB1958/HB1971 fixes that. Call your legislator today and tell them to vote yes. Tell them you know what §1-3-121 has become. Tell them you want it fixed. Tell them that Tennessee conservatives are watching this vote and are counting on them.
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Aaron Gulbransen serves as CEO of The Tennessee Conservatives Coalition.Â
