Tennessee laws effective July 1

Several new laws take effect July 1, 2022. The following is a list of those laws that cover education, criminal offenses, handgun permits, and more.

HB 1895: Education - As enacted, requires the commissioner of education to withhold a portion of the state education finance funds that an LEA is otherwise eligible to receive if the LEA fails or refuses to determine a student’s gender, for purposes of participation in school sports, by the student’s sex at the time of birth; exempts an LEA that fails or refuses to determine a student’s gender, for purposes of participation in school sports, by the student’s sex at the time of birth if the LEA’s failure or refusal to do so is required by a court or other legally binding order. - Amends TCA Title 49, Chapter 6.

SB 2153: Education, Higher - As enacted, prohibits males from participating in public higher education sports that are designated for females. - Amends TCA Title 49.

HB 0210: Education, Curriculum - As enacted, requires an LEA to publish its curriculum on the LEA’s website and to update curriculum changes at the beginning of each semester. - Amends TCA Title 49, Chapter 2.

HB 0215: Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation - As enacted, enacts the “Stopping Addiction and Fostering Excellence (SAFE) Act.” - Amends TCA Title 6; Title 33; Title 47; Title 63 and Title 68.

HB 0978: Criminal Offenses - As enacted, creates a Class C misdemeanor offense, punishable by a $50 fine and community service work, for camping along a controlled-access highway or entrance or exit ramp; expands Equal Access to Public Property Act of 2012, under which it is a Class E felony offense for a person to camp on property owned by the state knowing that the area on which the camping occurs is not specifically designated for use as a camping area, to apply the offense of unauthorized camping to all public property. - Amends TCA Title 39, Chapter 14; Title 39, Chapter 17, Part 3 and Title 55, Chapter 8.

HB 1018: Handgun Permits - As enacted, requires the department of safety to conduct a name-based criminal history record check every four years after a person is issued a concealed handgun carry permit; permits the department to revoke the permit if the person is ineligible to possess a firearm; implements a $50 fee for renewal of the permit. - Amends TCA Title 39, Chapter 17, Part 13.

HB 1916: State Employees - As enacted, prohibits a state agency from requiring a baccalaureate degree as a condition of state employment unless the knowledge, skills, or abilities required for the position can only reasonably be obtained through a course of study culminating in a baccalaureate degree. - Amends TCA Title 4; Title 8; Title 49 and Title 50.

HB 1964: Education - As enacted, requires LEAs to conduct remote learning drills; requires that teacher training programs provide instruction on strategies for virtual instruction to candidates seeking a license to teach or a license to serve as an instructional leader. - Amends TCA Title 49.

HB 2143: Basic Education Program (BEP) - As enacted, enacts the “Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) Act,” which replaces the basic education program (BEP) as the system for funding education for the public schools, kindergarten through grade twelve (K-12), beginning with the 2023-2024 school year.

HB 2228: Drugs, Prescription - As enacted, requires a healthcare prescriber to offer a prescription for an opioid antagonist, or another drug approved for complete or partial reversal of an opioid overdose event, to each patient prescribed an opioid, if certain conditions are present; authorizes imposition of civil penalty against a person who violates the requirement to offer such a drug; provides exception for opioid prescriptions to palliative care patients. - Amends TCA Title 53 and Title 63.

HB 2270:  Criminal Offenses - As enacted, enacts “Nicholas’ Law,” which specifies that a prior conviction for the offense of boating under the influence must be treated the same as a prior conviction for driving under the influence of an intoxicant for purposes of determining punishment for a violation of driving under the influence of an intoxicant; specifies that a violation of driving under the influence of an intoxicant must be treated the same as a prior conviction for boating under the influence for purposes of determining punishment for boating under the influence. - Amends TCA Title 39; Title 55, Chapter 10, Part 4 and Title 69, Chapter 9, Part 2.

HB 2657: Sentencing - As enacted, enacts the “Transparency In Sentencing For Victims Act.” - Amends TCA Title 40, Chapter 35.

HB 2783: Pensions and Retirement Benefits - As enacted, authorizes, from July 1, 2022, to July 1, 2025, retirees who have been retired for at least 60 days from TCRS or from a superseded system administered by the state, or from a local retirement fund, to accept re-employment as a kindergarten through twelfth grade teacher, substitute teacher, or school bus driver without loss or suspension of retirement benefits if certain conditions are met. - Amends TCA Title 8, Chapter 36, Part 8.

HB 7004: Education - As enacted, enacts the “Tennessee Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act”; requires local education agencies and public charter schools to implement a program of after-school learning mini-camps, learning loss bridge camps, and summer learning camps to remediate student learning loss. - Amends TCA Title 49, Chapter 6.

SB 0136: Employees, Employers - As enacted, enacts the “CROWN Act: Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” which prohibits an employer from adopting a policy that does not permit an employee to wear the employee’s hair in braids, locs, twists, or another manner that is part of the cultural identification of the employee’s ethnic group or that is a physical characteristic of the employee’s ethnic group; creates certain exceptions. - Amends TCA Title 4, Chapter 21; Title 8; Title 49 and Title 50.

SB 0882: DUI Offenses - As enacted, requires a court, in setting bail for a defendant charged with driving under the influence of an intoxicant or another offense in which alcohol was involved, to require the person to operate only a motor vehicle equipped with a functioning ignition interlock device unless such an order would not be in the best interest of justice. - Amends TCA Title 40, Chapter 11.

SB 1667: Special License Plates - As enacted, authorizes certain new special license plates, and revises various existing plate provisions. - Amends TCA Title 55, Chapter 4.

SB 1670: Local Education Agencies - As enacted, requires that each LEA employee who works directly with students in the LEA, instead of only teachers, be trained at least once every three years on the detection, intervention, prevention, and treatment of human trafficking in which the victim is a child. - Amends TCA Title 49.

SB 2012: Litter Control - As enacted, includes as a form of littering for any commercial purposes, which is considered aggravated criminal littering, the act of knowingly placing, dropping, or throwing two or more tires on public or private property without permission and without immediately removing the tires; punishable as a Class A misdemeanor or Class E felony based on weight/volume and prior convictions, except that a first offense involving more than eight tires placed, dropped, or thrown for a commercial purpose will be a Class E felony. - Amends TCA Title 39, Chapter 14, Part 5; Title 55 and Title 68, Chapter 211.

SB 2042: Salaries and Benefits - As enacted, requires employers to pay employees no less than the minimum wage, regardless of the subminimum wage for an employee whose earning or productive capacity is impaired by age, physical, or mental deficiency or injury. - Amends TCA Title 8 and Title 50.SB 2107: Boats, Boating - As enacted, regulates wakesurfing and wakeboarding in the public waters of this state. - Amends TCA Title 69, Chapter 9.

SB 2348: Transportation, Dept. of - As enacted, authorizes the department to allocate a portion of the funds generated by the barrel tax on beer and tax on bottled soft drinks to be used for roadway, waterway, and shoreline litter reduction initiatives. - Amends TCA Title 54, Chapter 1, Part 4; Section 57-5-201 and Section 67-4-402.

SB 2512: Traffic Safety - As enacted, increases, from a maximum of $50 to the amount of $200, the fine imposed for a first violation of the requirement to stop upon approaching a school bus that is based solely on evidence from a camera that is installed on the school bus. - Amends TCA Section 55-8-151.

SB 2592: Driver Licenses - As enacted, requires a person who is convicted of a human trafficking offense to obtain a driver license or photo identification license that bears a designation sufficient to enable a law enforcement officer to identify the bearer of the license as a person who has been convicted of a human trafficking offense; requires the department of safety to add such designation to the license of persons convicted of a human trafficking offense. - Amends TCA Section 39-13-314; Title 40 and Title 55, Chapter 50.

SB 2683: Criminal Offenses - As enacted, requires that a person convicted of first degree murder for the killing of another in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of aggravated rape, rape, rape of a child, and aggravated rape of a child be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole. - Amends TCA Title 39 and Title 40.

SB 2748: Children - As enacted, redefines “adversely affect the child’s health and welfare” for purposes of the offense of knowingly abusing or neglecting a child under 18 years of age, so as to adversely affect the child’s health and welfare; revises the offense of a person or entity operating a child care agency without being licensed or continuing to operate such agency while a suspension of the license is in effect, or operating a child care agency following the effective date of a denial or revocation of a license. - Amends TCA Title 37, Chapter 5; Title 39, Chapter 15, Part 4 and Title 71, Chapter 3, Part 5.

SB 2769: Jails, Local Lock-ups - As enacted, prohibits, beginning on the date on which a pregnancy is known to a law enforcement agency and confirmed by a healthcare professional, placing an inmate, who is in the custody of a correctional institution, in restraints; creates certain exceptions. - Amends TCA Title 41.

SB 2852: Public Utilities - As enacted, requires a utility system, upon request or application for a connection of utility service by a customer, to promptly provide the customer the connection cost. - Amends TCA Title 4; Title 5; Title 6; Title 7; Title 65 and Title 67.