(The Center Square) – A bill that would allow school districts to check students’ immigration status is on the House of Representatives calendar for Monday.
House Bill 793 is an amended version of a Senate bill that would allow school districts to charge tuition to students not legally in the country. It passed the Senate 19-13 during the final days of the 2025 session.
The House version of the bill would require school personnel to report residency information only to the Department of Education, according to House Majority Leader William Lamberth, the measure’s sponsor.
“And then we can take whatever action down the road that this body would chose to take,” Lambert told the House Finance Ways and Means Subcommittee on March 5.
Lawmakers changed the bill after the original fiscal note indicated the law could cause Tennessee to lose $1.1 billion in federal education funding if it is determined the bill violates a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision establishing the right to education for all students, regardless of immigration status.
The bill is one of 13 related to illegal immigration under consideration by the Tennessee General Assembly. The House Democratic Caucus voted to take a “caucus position” against all of the bills.
“Once again, our caucus is wholly united in our opposition to discriminatory legislation that unfairly targets Tennessee residents,”Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons of Nashville said. “Republicans control every branch of government, so it says a lot that they would rather use their power to target innocent children and deprive families of opportunity here in Tennessee than actually do their job and fix the broken immigration system in Washington.”
A bill that would create a class A misdemeanor for a person illegally in the country with a deportation order is also on the calendar.
Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, questioned Lamberth about the bill during a Wednesday meeting of the House Judiciary Committee, saying everything she has read indicates the bill is unconstitutional.
“Is that a problem for you?” Johnson asked House Majority Leader William Lamberth, the bill’s sponsor. “Is this one of those Stephen Miller bill at any cost to the Tennessee taxpayer?”
Lamberth said legal immigrants were welcome in the state, but those coming illegally needed to “go back to your country.”
“There’s 8.3 billion people in this world,” Lamberth said. “They can’t all fit in the United States and especially in the state of Tennessee.”
The House meets at 2 p.m. Central.
