The Lay of the Land, Part 3
TN Legislation with regard to Abortion, Immigration, Education, and Finance
In the first two parts of this series, we looked at how state government works and why it takes so long to change the law (and why that’s a good thing). Now we’re going to look at some specific legislation that has been filed in the 2025 session.
A few notes before we get into it:
About 200 bills have been filed in the House and Senate as of this morning. Many of these are duplicated, with versions filed in both chambers, and in these cases we’ve used just the House bill number.
Of the remaining bills, we’ve ignored those that make minor changes or continue current government operations, and flagged 29 bills of interest.
Since 29 bills is too many to fit in one newsletter, we’ll cover them topically this week and next.
This newsletter’s topics are: Education, Abortion, Immigration, and Finance. Within each category, bills are listed in order of filing, not order of importance.
Quoted language below indicates wording pulled directly from a bill’s text. Beyond that, summaries are ours and may include minor errors — please double-check the actual language of a bill if something interests/concerns you!
To find the exact text of any bill, follow this link and search for the bill number (e.g. HB0001). HB stands for “House Bill” and SB stands for “Senate Bill”.
Education
Education will be a big topic at the capitol this year, given that Governor Lee has once again expressed his desire to create a School Choice program in the state. Notable bills already filed include:
HB0001 — The “Education Freedom Act”. This is the Governor’s school choice bill, which is really too long to summarize here. But in essence, it would create a state scholarship for 20,000 K-12 students in the ‘25-’26 school year. This scholarship would be about $7,000 and allow the student to go to a charter or private school instead of a public school. However, it would not take money from the public schools those students leave, meaning that it should cost the state about $140,000,000 in the first year. The plan is for it to grow in subsequent years to accommodate more students. This bill is likely to change throughout the year. (Sponsor: Lamberth) (Edit: The first version of this post incorrectly stated that the program would accept 10,000 students and cost $7,000,000. That number and the subsequent math were both incorrect and have now been corrected.)
HB0013 and HB0041 — Prohibits phone usage in school classrooms except in certain circumstances. (Very similar bills, sponsored by Cepicky and Howell, respectively.)
HB0047 — Allows a Local Board of Education to display historically significant documents, including US founding documents and the Ten Commandments, in prominent locations within school buildings. (Sponsor: Hale)
HB0064 — Requires that education programs including minors must have segregated bathrooms, showers, and changing areas based on biological anatomy and genetics existing at birth. (Sponsor: Bulso)
HB0085 — Requires that public and charter schools give elementary school children 60 minutes of physical activity per day, not spent on electronic devices. (Sponsor: Cepicky)
Abortion
With the advent of the Dobbs decision from the Supreme Court, abortion has become a focal point of many state legislatures. Already on the table for this year, we have:
HB0014 — Clarifies that the term “abortion” does not include contraceptives, nor disposal of embryos resulting from fertility treatments. (Sponsor: Love)
HB0026 — Prohibits mailing or delivering abortion-inducing drugs into the state of Tennessee. Creates a strict liability of $5,000,000 to anyone mailing or delivering these drugs, in the case of the death of an unborn child resulting from the mailing or delivery of such drugs. (Sponsor: Bulso)
HB0027 — States that Tennessee shall not “deny, restrict, interfere with, or discriminate against” a person’s “right to have an abortion”, or in any way criminalize that right. Also appears to delete all conflicting code with reference to abortion, but we did not complete a full analysis. (Sponsor: Behn)
Immigration
It’s odd that immigration weighs heavily in the minds of Tennesseans, given that we do not share a border with any other countries, and immigration is largely a federal concern. But with unprecedented levels of immigration over the last four years, state legislators are trying to improvise. Bills filed include:
HB0010 — Requires local law enforcement agencies to request immigration detainers from ICE when they arrest individuals who are unlawfully in the US, and to hold them as long as possible. Further requires that after detaining, they transport these individuals to a sanctuary city outside Tennessee, and creates a system to recoup those transportation costs from the federal government. (Sponsor: Warner)
HB0011 — Requires that Tennessee create different drivers’ licenses for noncitizens than those used for citizens. (Sponsor: Cepicky)
HB0069 — Creates a secure portal for election officials to verify voter eligibility, including in cases of felony conviction. Also requires that non-citizens be issued a “temporary driver license” which looks different from a citizen’s driver license, to create clarity around voter registration and identification. (Sponsor: Lamberth)
SB0017 — Requires law enforcement to communicate the immigration status of individuals arrested for criminal offenses to the federal government; fines agencies failing to do so up to $1,000. (Sponsor: Gardenhire)
Finance
This section includes taxes and business. A few interesting bills:
HB0002 and HB0021 — Removes the state sales tax on food and food ingredients (Sponsors: Behn and Davis, respectively.)
SB0037 — Increases the annual report filling fee from $20 to $300 for for-profit and non-profit corporations. (Sponsor: Campbell)
SB0040 — Creates a tax incentive for businesses to transfer ownership of the business to their employees. (Sponsor: Walley)