Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Tuesday signed into law a bill that will allow a person to be sentenced to death for the rape of a child, the Center Square reports.
Tennessee now joins Florida, which passed a similar bill in 2023, defying the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008). That decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy for the 5-4 majority, found that “a death sentence for one who raped but did not kill a child, and who did not intend to assist another in killing the child, is unconstitutional under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments” which ban cruel and unusual punishment.
It appears that Gov. Lee and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are both banking on the right-wing Supreme Court overturning Kennedy. DeSantis said as much when his state passed the bill, saying at a news conference that Kennedy “was wrong. We do not believe the Supreme Court in its current iteration would uphold it.” Three of the four dissenters in Kennedy, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas, are still on the Court and have been joined by conservative justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch.
At least four other states are considering similar bills, including South Dakota, Idaho, and Missouri.