‘Tennessee broke my heart’: Why one mom who challenged the state’s anti-transgender law abandoned the suit and the state

When Amy Allen’s son came out as transgender, he told her first. One evening while they were driving, Allen sensed something was coming.

“He’d been not his usual … upbeat self, and so I was getting concerned,” she says. “I just started asking questions. ‘Did something happen at the activity? Did something happen at school? Did you have a fight with a friend?'”

But his trouble wasn’t about starting middle school. He told her he felt more comfortable thinking of himself as a boy.

Allen had already done her research on transgender issues. When she was a teacher, she’d had a trans student in her classroom and had wanted to know how best to support them. But this was her child. So, she consulted an endocrinologist, and therapists who specialized in trans issues — something she wishes lawmakers would do.

“Why don’t you listen to the experts? It’s just, you know, it’s so infuriating that the people who are in charge, who have the power, don’t do their due diligence like we as parents have done and have read everything we can get our hands on,” she says.

In 2021, the legislature passed a measure that barred trans students from using the school bathroom that aligns with their gender. Adam, like so many trans kids across the state, avoided using school bathrooms. That meant not drinking water during school and waiting to use the bathroom somewhere else.

Allen tried to talk to her representatives, but she says her legislator, Susan Lynn, just didn’t show up to their meeting. She tried to arrange a meeting with Gov. Bill Lee’s office.

“That went basically ignored as well,” she says. “It was just a constant frustration because they think they know better, I guess, and they probably have never really sat down and talked with a trans kid or a family that has trans kids.”

So, with all lobbying options exhausted, Allen signed onto a lawsuit with another Wilson County family, backed by the Human Rights Campaign. The other family sued on behalf of their trans daughter.

But even while deciding to fight Tennessee’s anti-trans bathroom law in court, Allen and her family had an eye on bluer states.

“There are so many families that don’t have the luxury of saying, ‘Well, if things get bad, we can (leave),'” she says. “We have that luxury and other families don’t, you know, can’t just up and leave, can’t just enroll their kids in private school, which we did for eighth grade.”

So, when Adam’s new school wasn’t panning out, Allen and her family moved to Massachusetts and left the lawsuit behind.

She wasn’t the only mom who made that decision. The other family on the suit held out until the end of this past school year, but both plaintiffs wouldn’t stay in Tennessee long enough for the case to go through the courts.

“What does it say? I guess it says that, you know, too bad for Tennessee. When people ask me if I miss Tennessee, I say I miss my friends … but Tennessee broke my heart. It’s a wonderful place full of so many wonderful people who, if they were paying attention to what the legislature does, would be horrified.”

As for Adam’s new school, Allen says he’s found community within its theater program.

“I spent that first day after dropping him off just on pins and needles, so worried. And I got a text sometime in the late afternoon … saying, ‘Can I hang out with my new friends after school?’ And I just about cried really.”

He’s not the only one who’s having a better time after leaving Tennessee.

“Moving here, for me personally, has been just this sigh of relief,” Allen says. “Like, I can just go back to just being a human being and not the activist mom, you know?”

A judge has dismissed the lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s anti-trans bathroom law, now that both plaintiffs are out of state. But the Human Rights Campaign says that it will work with families who may want to challenge the law in the future.

Correction: This story originally misstated one of the parties Amy Allen says she attempted to reach to discuss anti-transgender legislation. She says she tried to contact the office of Gov. Bill Lee, not Attorney General Herbert Slatery.

Update: This story has been updated to state that the suit challenging the anti-trans bathroom bill was dismissed June 21. A comment from the Human Rights Campaign on the dismissal has also been added.