The 2025 Tennessee General Assembly has adjourned, and our legislature passed almost 600 bills. It was a wild session, with numerous protests against the bill allowing schools to deny undocumented immigrant children. While that bill stalled, it might be considered again for the 2026 legislative session. Here are 28 other bills that did pass, from legislation that targets undocumented immigrants to increased recess time.
🏛️ Civics / Government
Dismantling DEI Departments Act: Bars state agencies, local governments, and public colleges and universities from promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Dissolves the state’s Human Rights Commission and transfers the responsibility for investigating claims of discrimination by state agencies to the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office.
Designates Nashville’s hot chicken as an official state food.
🏢 Business & Finances
Limits the use of the THCa flower in hemp products, establishes tax rates for different types of cannabis products, and moves regulation of these products to the alcoholic beverage commission.
Levies a higher tax rate on vapor products than tobacco.
🚨 Criminal Justice
Creates new misdemeanor offenses, including intentionally refusing to give one's name or giving a false name to law enforcement, getting within 25 feet of law enforcement after being asked to back up, leaving hate-filled flyers in neighborhoods, hanging banners from overpasses and bridges, and riding in the back of a box truck.
Voyeurism Victims Act: Adds protections for victims recorded or photographed without their consent.
Requires a private correctional services facility’s inmate population to be reduced by 10% if the death rate is twice the rate of an equivalent state-operated prison.
Allows a charitable organization that provides housing to a person whom they know is unlawfully present in the United States to be held liable for losses, damages, injury, or death resulting from a criminal offense committed by that person while receiving housing services from the organization.
Expands the definition of “machine gun” to include any gun capable of shooting more than two shots automatically without manual reloading, and increases penalties for selling machine guns in the state.
Requires all files and juvenile court records of deceased school shooters who are minors be released to the public.
Invalidates out-of-state driver’s licenses held by undocumented immigrants, making it a Class B misdemeanor.
Creates more severe penalties for people who threaten mass violence online, and new penalties against people who post others’ addresses and phone numbers on public websites.
Makes it a crime to harbor, hide, or conceal individuals without lawful immigration status.
Preventing Deepfake Images Act: Creates a civil and criminal action for individuals who are the subject of an intimate digital depiction that is disclosed without the individual’s consent.
🏫 Education & Children’s Services
Education Freedom Act of 2025: Creates an education freedom scholarship program caregivers can use for their children to attend private school, commonly referred to as the “School Voucher” bill.
Requires schools to adopt a policy prohibiting students from using cell phones during instructional time.
Establishes that family life curriculum in public schools must include age-appropriate instruction that having children after graduating school, entering the workforce, and getting married leads to positive personal and societal outcomes.
Teen Social Media and Internet Safety Act: Requires the Dept. of Education to develop social media and internet safety curricula for students in grades 6-12, and requires schools to instruct students using that curricula.
Requires a public school that receives credible information regarding a threat of violence or significantly disruptive behavior directed toward the school to notify the guardians of enrolled students of the threat or disruptive behavior within 24 hours of reporting it to law enforcement.
Amends a bill passed last year to allow schools to offer non-emergency first aid, like bandages and ice packs, to students without signed parental consent.
Increases required elementary school recess time from 15 minutes per day to 40.
Establishes the Foster Care Bill of Rights, guaranteeing all children in foster care access to an education, medical care, and a safe environment, and ensuring that they can report abuse without fear of punishment.
🌊 Environment
Prohibits the TN Dept. of Environment and Conservation from applying criteria that will result in the classification of a property as a wetland, unless the property is classified as a wetland under federal law.
Prohibits a state agency from making changes to the state’s drinking water, air quality, or hazardous waste handling unless it's based on the best available peer-reviewed scientific and technical information.
🏥 Health
Medical Ethics Defense Act: Prohibits a healthcare provider from being required to participate in, or pay for, a procedure, treatment, or service that violates their conscience.
Fertility Treatment and Contraceptive Protection Act: Protects an individual’s right to participate in fertility treatments and use birth control.
Caring for Caregivers Act: Requires the Dept. of Disability and Aging to create and administer a three-year family caregiver pilot program to provide grants to caregivers of family members diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease or related dementia to offset expenditures.
