The result may be loosely labeled "pro-trans," but the reasoning may also support a First Amendment right of businesses or some others to decline to use pronouns that they don't wish to endorse.
The opinion is by Judge Aleta Trauger (M.D. Tenn.), in Bongo Productions, LLC v. Lawrence:
[C]ompelled speech is [not] always unconstitutional. Rather, courts have closely looked at the various situations in which compelled speech issues arise—from product labeling to compulsory displays of patriotism—and have concluded that some types of compelled speech are more constitutionally suspect than others. Although a complex range of factors may come into play, the type of forced-speech policy most likely to run afoul of the First Amendment is, generally speaking, one in which "individuals are coerced into betraying their convictions" by "involuntar[ily] affirm[ing]" the government's position on a "controversial" topic. That is particularly true when the controversial speech being compelled is not "purely factual" in nature.
The Supreme Court has expressly recognized that "sexual orientation and gender identity" are among the "controversial subjects" capable of raising such constitutional concerns. In 2021, however, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a law mandating that private parties voice a specific message on precisely that issue. The newly-enacted law requires any qualifying business with what the court will, for efficiency's sake, refer to as a "trans-inclusive" restroom policy—that is, a formal or informal policy of allowing transgender and nonbinary patrons to use the restrooms that they earnestly believe to be appropriate for them—to post a garish warning sign announcing that policy in specific language of the government's, not their, choice…. Because that kind of forced affirmance of a contestable message violates the Constitution, the plaintiffs argue, the enforcement of the Act should be enjoined….
