By Connie Reguli, J.D. – April 3, 2025

CALL TO ACTION – TENNESSEE PARENTS

Last year, the Tenn. Gen. Assembly passed the “Parental Rights Bill”.

Connie Reguli, J.D. lobbied against this bill. She argued that parents already had protected parental rights under the 14th Amendment. These rights were confirmed by the United States Supreme Court. Reguli further warned, ‘if you let the state legislators put parental rights in the state code, they can revise them at any time. They can slice away at your rights.’

…AND THEY HAVE. This year Faison (HB 0826) and Haile (SB 0895) filed a new bill changing the parental rights law of 2024.

This bill was filed as a ‘caption bill’ initially. This means the bill was filed with one simple sentence. It asked the courts to report on how many parental rights bills were filed. Then the bill was secretly ‘amended’ to slice away parental rights. The bill added:

1 – A parent can remove a child for religious purposes. If it’s more than 20 days in a school year, the school can force the parent to meet “to discuss the child’s educational future”.

2 – The school no longer needs parental consent to audio record a child. It also doesn’t require consent to video record a child at school or during activities.

3 – A healthcare provider does not need parental consent to examine a child. This is applicable under ‘reasonable suspicion’ of neglect or abuse.

You might not be moved by these new limitations to parental rights. Still, it is just a matter of time. The amendments to this bill will continue to limit the rights of parents. For instance ‘reasonable suspicion’ is not the legal standard under our Fourth Amendment protections, it is exigent circumstances. That means an immediate emergency.

This bill has passed committees and is headed to the floor on April 7th.

Email or call your legislators to vote no.

The bill is here: https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx…

Find your legislator is here:

https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/Apps/fml2022/search.aspx