Monday – 3:30 p.m. CT – Senate Regular Calendar
Death penalty for child rape? GOP bill may discourage families from reporting
· 2. SB 1834, by Sen. Jack Johnson, would authorize the death penalty as a punishment for child rape.
· As justified as the policy may sound, advocates say the bill could lead to more family coverups and fewer police reports because child rapes are often committed by relatives.
· They say parents may not report the attack if it means a death sentence for their sibling or one of their other children.
Bill requires proof of age, parental consent for minors before joining social media
· 23. SB 2097 by Sen. Jack Johnson would prohibit Tennesseans who are under 18 from signing up for a social media account without approval from a parent or guardian.
· The bill says, “A social media company shall prohibit a minor from becoming an account holder unless the social media company has the express consent of the minor's parent to allow the minor to become an account holder.”
· A number of states have passed laws requiring parental consent for kids to use social media, according to the AP. But those laws have faced legal challenges.
· Commentary: Gunshot wounds are the leading cause of death for children in Tennessee – not TikTok, not books, not history lessons, not flags, not vaccines, not drag shows.
Covenant School: Bill limits access to child autopsies, preserves in-person review
· 8. SB 2020, by Sen. Shane Reeves
Gov. Lee’s push to partially privatize building safety, health permit inspections nears finish line
· Senate Message Calendar — SB 2100, one of the governor’s initiatives, requires local governments to process building and codes permits within 30 days. To comply, the law authorizes, but essentially forces, local governments to hire third-party, for-profit inspectors.
· The preemption law will only apply to local governments that have adopted building safety standards beyond the state’s bare bones building safety codes.
Tuesday
Guns in school: Republican bill would allow teachers, staff to carry guns
· 1:30 p.m. Senate Regular Calendar – 3. Under SB 1325 by Sen. Paul Bailey any school teacher or staff who holds a gun permit could carry a concealed handgun on school grounds.
· More guns are not the answer. In fact, the increased presence of guns leads to more unintentional shootings.
· America leads all high-income nations in unintentional shootings, and, in 2023, Tennessee ranked 41st in the US – one of the worst firearm fatalities rates in the nation, according to America’s Health Rankings.
Tennessee could require porn sites to verify every user’s age with a state ID
· 1:30 p.m. Senate Regular Calendar – 9. SB 1792, by Sen. Becky Massey, would require porn websites to review a state-issued ID to verify the age of users.
· This sweeping censorship bill creates a class C felony charge for website operators who do not comply with these age-verification rules when at least a third of the site’s content is “sexually explicit and harmful or inappropriate for minors.”
· In the age of data breaches, privacy experts worry about the amount of personal data this law may put at risk.
Sen. Taylor would bar felons from participating in voter registration drives
· 1:30 p.m. Senate Regular Calendar – 16. SB 2586, by Sen. Brent Taylor, would prohibit people who have served their time from participating in voter registration drives. The bill also creates a $5,000 civil fine for any violations of the law.
· This bill adds insult to injury for returning citizens and may violate their constitutional right to participate in First Amendment-protected voter registration. Federal courts have ruled previously that encouraging others to register to vote is “pure speech.”
· Context: Tennessee denies the right to vote to more than 470,000 citizens because of felony convictions and leads the nation in disenfranchisement of Black citizens at a “staggering rate of just over 21%,” according to The Sentencing Project.
Bill untangles gun rights from voting rights restoration
· 1:30 p.m. Senate Regular Calendar – 28. SB 2913 by Sen. Paul Bailey would allow Tennesseans who were convicted of a felony to apply for voting rights – without restoring their gun rights first.
· The bill comes after an activist Republican state election official began this summer requiring felons to get their gun rights restored before they could get voting rights restored.
· The Associated Press has the backstory.
Gov. Lee’s voucher scam last on the committee calendar. Are they ready for action?
· 8:30 a.m. Finance — SB 0503 by Sen. Jack Johnson would create an expensive new education voucher program that uses public dollars to subsidize tuition at private schools.
· House and Senate Republicans remain several hundred million dollars apart on funding their competing versions of the plan. The Tennessean reports that House Republicans intend to pay for their voucher legislation by reassigning dollars earmarked for K-12 teacher raises and student support.
· At this point, it’s unclear whether enough progress has been made to force a vote on Tuesday.
Republicans undermine right to bail – without evidence that it works to reduce crime
· 8:30 a.m. Finance – Sen. Brent Taylor is sponsoring three bills targeting every Tennessean’s constitutional right to bail. The legislation would expand pretrial detention and increase incarceration costs on local taxpayers who fund jails.
· These policies may sound “tough,” but there is scant evidence that stricter bail laws reduce crime, according to a Governing Magazine report in February.
· SB 2565 *Taylor — Removes the defendant's financial condition as a consideration for bail
· SB 2563 *Taylor — Allows police to charge a defendant who is out on a bond to be charged with a class A misdemeanor for violating a bond order, even if the bond order is not a crime, i.e. curfew or missed appointment.
· SB 2564 *Taylor— creates a Class A misdemeanor offense of violation of a condition of release, even if the condition is not a crime.
Wednesday/Thursday
GOP would rewrite the Constitution to say legislature can’t regulate guns for crime prevention
· Senate Regular Calendar — SJR 0904 would rewrite Article 1, Section 26 of the Tennessee Constitution to eliminate the legislature’s power to regulate firearms for the purpose of crime prevention.
· This amendment deletes this provision, “the Legislature shall have power, by law, to regulate the wearing of arms with a view to prevent crime.”
· Tennessee has the seventh highest firearm homicide rate in the nation, according to the CDC Fatal Injury report.