Tennessee

Tennessee's statewide voucher initiative for the 2025-26 school year authorizes up to 20,000 education vouchers of about $7,300 each.

Under Tennessee's voucher law, private schools accepting vouchers are not required to administer the full Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program and may instead administer a national standardized test.

Tennessee's voucher law includes a 'hold harmless' provision that provides additional state funding to school districts that experience student disenrollment to private schools through the voucher program.

Under Tennessee's 2025–26 voucher initiative, 10,000 vouchers are reserved for specified categories of students (such as lower-income or disabled students) and 10,000 vouchers are available to any student entitled to attend a public school, including students already enrolled in private schools, including religious schools.

Tennessee law permits private schools that accept vouchers to opt out of administering the full Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program and instead administer a nationally normed standardized test.

Tennessee's military code includes provisions that, in some scenarios such as a 'breakdown of law and order,' require a request from a local government to use the National Guard.

As of 2025, Tennessee law permits inmates who were convicted of crimes before January 1999 to choose electrocution (the electric chair) instead of the state's preferred method of execution, lethal injection.

As of 2025, the electric chair was used five times in the United States during the previous decade (2015–2025), and all five uses occurred in Tennessee.

A 2022 independent review found that none of the drugs prepared for the seven inmates executed in Tennessee since 2018 had been properly tested.

In December 2024, the Tennessee Department of Correction issued a new execution protocol that uses a single drug, pentobarbital.

Arkansas, Tennessee, and Utah have laws requiring public schools to teach elementary, middle, and high school students basic gun-safety principles, including guidance on proper firearm storage, and those lessons can be provided to children as young as five.

Tennessee law grants the governor of Tennessee the authority to dispatch the Tennessee National Guard and to determine when that need exists.

Some legal interpretations of Tennessee law assert that the governor may deploy the Tennessee National Guard for civil unrest only in cases of rebellion or invasion and that such deployment would require action by the state legislature.

Tennessee law specifies categories of witnesses entitled to be present at executions and includes a provision for seven members of the news media.

The 2025 report by Black Voters Matter Fund and Fair Fight Action estimated that Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas could end up with fewer Democratic U.S. House representatives if Section 2 protections were eliminated.

In Tennessee, once a deceased person has been positively identified—usually through DNA comparison with a known close relative—the county medical examiner issues a death certificate.

Accurate Energetic Systems operates an ammunition/munitions facility in rural Tennessee located near the border of Hickman County and Humphreys County, just off Interstate 40 about 60 miles west of Nashville.

Accurate Energetic Systems is a significant employer in sparsely populated rural communities such as McEwen, Tennessee.

Publix operates supermarket stores in eight U.S. states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, with more than 1,421 total supermarket locations and over 900 locations in Florida.

North Carolina and Tennessee permit open carry of firearms.

State lawmakers in Missouri, Vermont, and Tennessee have introduced legislation specifically aimed at combating antisemitism in K-12 schools.

Tennessee's 7th Congressional District is located in central and western Tennessee and extends from the Kentucky border to the Alabama border.