Tennessee Senate Bills

Veterans - As enacted, authorizes state veterans' homes to provide services other than skilled nursing services to honorably discharged veterans. - Amends TCA Title 58, Chapter 7.

Parks, Natural Areas Preservation - As enacted, designates segments of the Buffalo River, Duck River, and certain other rivers and creeks as Class II pastoral river areas; expands certain public outreach requirements concerning scenic rivers. - Amends TCA Title 11, Chapter 13.

Hospitals and Health Care Facilities - As enacted, lowers the age of an inpatient from 65 to 50 or older when a hospital, each year from October 1 through March 1, must offer immunization against influenza disease prior to discharge; requires a hospital to offer immunization against pneumococcal disease to an inpatient aged 50 or older prior to discharge. - Amends TCA Title 68.

Sunset Laws - As enacted, extends the Tennessee council for career and technical education to June 30, 2027. - Amends TCA Title 4, Chapter 29 and Title 49, Chapter 11, Part 2.

Sunset Laws - As enacted, extends the inmate disciplinary oversight board to June 30, 2028. - Amends TCA Title 4, Chapter 29 and Title 41, Chapter 21, Part 10.

Opioids - As enacted, adds Alvogen, Inc., Apotex Corp., and Zydus Pharmaceuticals (USA) Inc. to the list of companies that may be released by the attorney general for pending or future claims regarding opioids. - Amends TCA Title 20 and Title 33.

Criminal Offenses - As enacted, directs the Tennessee advisory commission on intergovernmental relations to study the status of the crime stoppers programs across the state and make recommendations to enhance such programs. - Amends TCA Title 38; Title 39 and Title 40.

Health Care - As enacted, revises law relative to the operation of acute care hospitals. - Amends TCA Title 4; Title 33; Title 68; Title 71 and Chapter 985 of the Public Acts of 2024.

Criminal Offenses - As enacted, makes various changes to law relative to human trafficking. - Amends TCA Title 37; Title 39 and Title 40.

Contracts - As enacted, requires a court to apply rebuttable presumptions when determining the reasonableness in time of a restrictive covenant sought to be enforced after the termination of an employment or business relationship; makes related changes. - Amends TCA Title 50; Title 63 and Title 68.

State Government - As enacted, requires each governmental entity to revise any existing ordinance, resolution, rule, policy, and procedure that includes a reference to a natural person's sex or gender to state that those terms are defined as the immutable characteristics of the person's reproductive system that identify the person as male or female, as determined by anatomy and genetics testing at the time of birth; makes related changes. - Amends TCA Title 1; Title 3; Title 4; Title 5; Title 6; Title 7 and Title 8.

Criminal Procedure - As enacted, prohibits a defendant charged with certain offenses from being released on the defendant's personal recognizance or upon execution of an unsecured bond. - Amends TCA Title 40.

Courts - As enacted, enacts the "Violent Criminal Court Act." - Amends TCA Title 8; Title 10; Title 16; Title 37; Title 38; Title 39; Title 40; Title 41 and Title 55.

Health Care - As enacted, revises law relative to gender clinics and related services. - Amends TCA Title 1; Title 4; Title 33; Title 56; Title 63; Title 68 and Title 71.

Pensions and Retirement Benefits - As enacted, enacts the "Tennessee Trump Account Program Act." - Amends TCA Title 4; Title 8; Title 9 and Title 50.

Salaries and Benefits - As enacted, enacts "The Chance Carlton Act." - Amends TCA Title 5; Title 6; Title 7, Chapter 51; Title 8 and Title 50.

Criminal Offenses - As enacted, creates the offense for a person to knowingly travel, with intent to commit theft of another person's cash, from a commercial business; a financial institution; or an automated teller machine, on the same path or route as another person without substantial deviation from that path or route while in possession of two or more criminal instruments. - Amends TCA Title 39.

Criminal Offenses - As enacted, creates a criminal offense of knowingly violating a no contact order issued as part of a defendant's sentence or conditions of probation or parole following conviction for certain criminal offenses in which the alleged victim of the offense is a domestic abuse victim; punishes a violation as a Class A misdemeanor. - Amends TCA Title 39 and Title 40.

Education - As enacted, expands the prescribed forms of epinephrine that an LEA or nonpublic school is authorized to administer when a student is believed to be experiencing a life-threatening allergic or anaphylactic reaction to any prescribed form of epinephrine, not just epinephrine auto-injectors. - Amends TCA Title 49 and Title 68, Chapter 140, Part 5.

Bail, Bail Bonds - As enacted, makes various changes related to entities seeking to secure the release of a defendant. - Amends TCA Title 39 and Title 40.

Criminal Offenses - As enacted, enacts "Matthew Davenport's Law," which creates certain criminal offenses and testing requirements related to Kratom. - Amends TCA Title 33, Chapter 2; Title 38; Title 39; Title 50; Title 63 and Title 68.

Agriculture, Dept. of - As enacted, enacts the "Representative Johnny Shaw Tennessee Agricultural Innovation and Education Initiative." - Amends TCA Title 4 and Title 43.

Secretary of State - As enacted, removes the filing fee that must be paid to the secretary of state to file articles of termination of corporation existence; increases the number of days after a person ceases solicitation activities after registration with the secretary of state, from 30 to 90, that the person has to notify the secretary of state; removes the requirement that a charitable organization that ceases solicitation activity and received in excess of $1 million in gross revenue during the most recently completed fiscal year include an audited financial statement and forms required to be filed by a charitable organization with the U.S. internal revenue service with the organization's notice to the secretary of state that the organization ceased solicitation activities. - Amends TCA Title 48.

Sentencing - As enacted, requires a sentencing court to order the sentences for two or more offenses involving more than one minor victim to run consecutively unless the court finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the facts of the case do not warrant the imposition of consecutive sentences and the imposition of consecutive sentences would not be in the best interest of justice. - Amends TCA Title 40.

Aircraft and Airports - As enacted, specifies that a joint board established by two municipalities and two counties pursuant to an interlocal agreement for the purpose of operating an airport is vested with all the powers, rights, duties, and privileges of a regional airport authority. - Amends TCA Title 42, Chapter 5.

Utilities, Utility Districts - As enacted, makes various changes to laws regarding utilities, including the procedure for consolidation of utilities and continuing education requirements for members of utility governing bodies. - Amends TCA Title 7, Chapter 34; Title 7, Chapter 82; Title 9, Chapter 21 and Title 68, Chapter 221.

Capitol - As enacted, creates a capitol hill protection zone around the state capitol grounds that includes the state capitol, capitol annexes, World War II Memorial Building that formerly housed the state library and archives, Supreme Court Building, William R. Snodgrass Tennessee Tower, War Memorial Building, Legislative Plaza, James K. Polk State Office Building, Rachel Jackson Building, Andrew Jackson Building, John Sevier State Office Building, Cordell Hull Building, and the grounds, roads, and sidewalks along either side of the roads immediately surrounding such buildings. - Amends TCA Title 4; Title 38; Title 39 and Title 40.

Criminal Offenses - As enacted, enacts "The Memphis Safe Task Force Accountability Act." - Amends TCA Title 8, Chapter 7 and Title 39.

Children - As enacted, provides, in addition to present law, an alternative method for the voluntary surrender of parental rights if executed within the geographic boundaries of the state. - Amends TCA Title 36; Title 37 and Title 68.

Criminal Offenses - As enacted, provides that a person is criminally responsible for an offense committed by the conduct of another if, acting with intent to benefit in the proceeds or results of the offense, the person solicits, directs, aids, or attempts to aid another person to commit the offense. - Amends TCA Title 39, Chapter 11; Title 39, Chapter 12; Title 39, Chapter 13; Title 39, Chapter 14; Title 40, Chapter 24; Title 40, Chapter 35 and Title 40, Chapter 39.

Physicians and Surgeons - As enacted, makes various changes relative to the authority of a physician or podiatrist to prescribe, dispense, or administer medication to the provider's own self or immediate family; makes related changes. - Amends TCA Title 33; Title 39; Title 53; Title 63 and Title 68.

Teachers, Principals and School Personnel - As enacted, extends present law concerning compensated unused leave for teachers to all employees of LEAs and public charter schools. - Amends TCA Title 4 and Title 49.

Criminal Offenses - As enacted, increases from a Class E felony to a Class D felony the offense of burglary of a conveyance. - Amends TCA Title 39 and Title 40.

District Attorneys - As enacted, authorizes the attorney general to conduct a study of a district attorney general's disposition of charges and other ancillary matters within the 30th judicial district; authorizes the attorney general to petition the supreme court for appointment of a district attorney general pro tem if a district attorney general in this state has peremptorily and categorically refused to prosecute criminal offenses based on an unjustifiable and unconstitutional standard, without regard to facts or circumstances or taken other official action that constitutes a failure or refusal to prosecute according to the law. - Amends TCA Title 8.

Insurance, Health, Accident - As enacted, requires a health insurer that issues, amends, delivers, or renews a contract or agreement for a health benefit plan to take effect on or after January 1, 2027, to include coverage for biomarker testing; requires a TennCare health benefit plan that is issued, amended, or renewed on or after January 1, 2027, to provide coverage for biomarker testing when medically necessary. - Amends TCA Title 56 and Title 71.

State Government - As enacted, authorizes the commissioner of environment and conservation, notwithstanding agreements authorized by the commissioner of general services and with approval of the state building commission, to enter into agreements contemplated for the private development, redevelopment, construction, and operation of facilities on lands with Cumberland Mountain State Park, and the department of environment and conservation may supervise the construction. - Amends TCA Title 3; Title 4; Title 8; Title 9; Title 10; Title 12; Title 13; Title 14; Title 15; Title 41; Title 50 and Title 57.

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation - As enacted, grants the bureau discretion to investigate reports of suspected elder financial exploitation. - Amends TCA Title 8; Title 38; Title 39; Title 45; Title 68 and Title 71.

Education - As enacted, authorizes local boards of education and public charter school governing bodies to allow schools in the LEA or the public charter school, as applicable, to display the Ten Commandments, the first sentence of the second paragraph of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, and the preamble to the United States Constitution in a prominent location in a school building. - Amends TCA Title 49.

Chiropractors - As enacted, requires certain insurers to reimburse chiropractic physicians at the same rate as physicians for the same services. - Amends TCA Title 56, Chapter 7 and Title 63.

Taxes, Sales - As enacted, authorizes an entity designated to operate a stadium designed to host games of an intercollegiate football team that competes in the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) to receive a special allocation of state and local sales tax revenue derived from the sale of admission to events occurring within the stadium and from all sales of food, drinks, merchandise, and parking sold on the premises of the stadium to fund capital and operation expenses for the stadium. - Amends TCA Title 67, Chapter 6.

Municipal Government - As enacted, extends from June 30, 2028 to June 30, 2038, the deadline by which a municipality that continues to receive an allocation of state sales tax revenue pursuant to the now-repealed Courthouse Square Revitalization Pilot Project Act of 2005, will continue to receive the allocation of the revenue. - Amends TCA Title 6 and Title 67, Chapter 6.

Memorials, Recognition - Do Something Tennessee Day, May 1, 2026 -

Memorials, Recognition - ALS Awareness Month -

General Assembly, Statement of Intent or Position - Supports efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and restore authority over education to the states. -

Memorials, Retirement - Rogers C. Anderson, Mayor of Williamson County -

Memorials, Academic Achievement - Emma Sue Gray, Valedictorian, Stone Memorial High School -

Memorials, Academic Achievement - Samuel Ryan Ferrell, Salutatorian, Stone Memorial High School -

Memorials, Recognition - Randall Franks and A Zippedy Doodle Day: American Folk Songs -

Memorials, Academic Achievement - Trystan Forehand, Valedictorian, Innovation Academy -

Memorials, Academic Achievement - Emma Evans, Salutatorian, Innovation Academy -

Memorials, Academic Achievement - Elijah Kannel, Salutatorian, Innovation Academy -

Memorials, Interns - Mitchell McCook -

Memorials, Personal Occasion - John Patrick Hallet and Susan Marie Hallet, 45th wedding anniversary -

Memorials, Academic Achievement - Jacob Grissom, Salutatorian, Van Buren County High School -

Memorials, Academic Achievement - McKenzie Greene, Salutatorian, Van Buren County High School -

Memorials, Academic Achievement - Nicolo Azzani, Salutatorian, Cumberland County High School -

Memorials, Academic Achievement - Liya Rakeshbhai Patel, Valedictorian, Cumberland County High School -

Memorials, Academic Achievement - Leslie Pickering, Salutatorian, White County High School -

Memorials, Academic Achievement - Addy Cocke, Valedictorian, White County High School -

Memorials, Academic Achievement - Macie Frazier, Valedictorian, Van Buren County High School -