Tennessee Enacts Felony Camping Law to Suppress Black Lives Matter Protests and Strip Voting Rights

Governor Bill Lee signed legislation on August 21, 2020 that escalated penalties for camping on Tennessee state property from a misdemeanor to a Class E felony punishable by up to six years in prison and permanent disenfranchisement—a transparent effort to suppress Black Lives Matter protests that had occupied the Tennessee State Capitol grounds since June 2020 by threatening demonstrators with felony convictions that would strip their voting rights in a critical election year. The law, rushed through the Republican-controlled legislature in a three-day special session and signed without public announcement, exemplifies the authoritarian tactics Tennessee’s GOP supermajority deployed to criminalize racial justice activism and weaponize felony disenfranchisement against Black protesters exercising their constitutional rights.

The legislation directly targeted Black Lives Matter demonstrators who had been camping outside the Tennessee State Capitol since June 2020, demanding meetings with Governor Lee to address racial inequality and police brutality following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. The protesters’ sustained presence and demands for racial justice posed an embarrassing challenge to Tennessee’s Republican leadership during a period of nationwide reckoning with police violence and systemic racism. Rather than engaging with protesters’ substantive demands, the Tennessee GOP chose to criminalize their presence through a draconian law specifically designed to force their removal under threat of felony prosecution.

House Bill 8005 redefined camping on state property to include using or placing any “piece of furniture,” shelter, or temporary structure, dramatically expanding the definition to capture virtually any form of sustained protest presence. The law mandates that violators receive a 24-hour warning before felony charges can be filed, but after that warning period, continued presence on state property becomes a Class E felony carrying up to six years in prison, fines up to $3,000, and mandatory restitution payments. The legislation also increased penalties for aggravated riot to include mandatory 45-day jail sentences, imposed higher fines for blocking emergency vehicles on highways, and created Class C felony charges for assaults on first responders—a package of provisions designed to comprehensively suppress protest tactics employed by racial justice demonstrators.

The voting rights implications of the felony camping provision represent the law’s most insidious feature. Tennessee maintains one of the nation’s most restrictive felony disenfranchisement regimes, permanently stripping voting rights from convicted felons who must then petition the state for restoration—a process that between 1990 and October 2019 restored rights to only 13,802 people out of more than 420,000 disenfranchised Tennesseans. By criminalizing protest activity as a felony rather than a misdemeanor, the law transforms constitutionally protected First Amendment activity into a basis for permanent voting rights revocation, creating a direct pipeline from political dissent to civic disenfranchisement.

The timing of the law’s enactment—just months before the November 2020 presidential election—underscores its voter suppression intent. By threatening Black Lives Matter protesters with felony convictions that would immediately strip their voting rights in a high-stakes election year, the law served dual purposes: dispersing sustained protests against racial injustice and removing politically active Black voters from the electorate. The racial targeting was explicit, as Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally acknowledged when he stated the law aimed “to prevent what has happened in other cities like Portland and Washington, DC”—a reference to Black Lives Matter protests in majority-progressive cities.

Civil rights organizations immediately condemned the legislation’s racial motivations. Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, stated: “The racial motivation underlying the law is undeniable. It’s a clear backlash response to the Black Lives Matter movement and to people who are decisively protesting racial injustice and police violence.” The ACLU of Tennessee wrote to Governor Lee warning that the law “chills free speech, undermines criminal justice reform, and fails to address the issues of racial justice and police violence raised by the protesters.” Democratic legislators characterized the bill as “ridiculous” and warned that minority and homeless citizens would be disproportionately targeted by the camping provisions.

The law’s passage through a three-day special legislative session—bypassing normal committee hearings and public input processes—demonstrated the Tennessee GOP’s commitment to authoritarian methods. Rather than allow sustained debate or public participation, Republican leaders rushed the bill through both chambers and secured Governor Lee’s signature within days, implementing the law effective October 1, 2020 with minimal public notice. This legislative process itself violated democratic norms by deliberately circumventing opportunities for constituent input and transparent deliberation.

The Tennessee felony camping law exemplifies how Republican-controlled state governments weaponize criminal law to suppress political opposition and manipulate electoral composition through strategic disenfranchisement. By transforming constitutionally protected protest activity into felony conduct punishable by voting rights revocation, the law creates a direct mechanism for converting political activism into civic exclusion—a fundamentally authoritarian tactic deployed specifically against Black Lives Matter protesters demanding racial justice. The law’s design reveals the Tennessee GOP’s understanding that Black political mobilization threatens their electoral dominance, necessitating legal mechanisms to criminalize and disenfranchise Black activists.

The felony camping law also reflects Tennessee’s broader pattern of deploying state power to suppress dissent and maintain white Republican political control. Like the 2023 expulsion of the Tennessee Three, the camping law demonstrates the GOP supermajority’s willingness to abandon democratic norms and constitutional principles to preserve power. By criminalizing protest, stripping voting rights, and targeting Black activists for unique legal jeopardy, Tennessee Republicans constructed a legal infrastructure for authoritarian governance masked as public safety legislation.

The law’s permanent disenfranchisement provision exposes the kleptocratic logic underlying Tennessee’s criminal justice system: rather than serving public safety or rehabilitation, felony convictions function as political weapons to remove opposition voters from the electorate. In a state where more than 420,000 residents remain disenfranchised due to felony convictions—a population disproportionately Black and low-income—each new felony category represents an opportunity to strategically shrink the Democratic-leaning electorate while maintaining plausible deniability through facially neutral criminal statutes. This weaponization of criminal law for partisan electoral advantage represents institutional corruption at its most fundamental level: perverting the justice system’s core functions to serve the narrow political interests of the party in power.