18-04-2025
TN Rep. Hawk: Undocumented students bill may be dead for '25
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) — A controversial bill that would require Tennessee public school systems to determine all students' citizenship or legal status may be dead for the year, a Northeast Tennessee representative said Thursday.
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The bill, which would also allow school systems to charge tuition to undocumented students or deny them enrollment, is not on the House of Representatives calendar for next week. The legislative session is set to wrap up then. The measure passed the Senate 19-13 last week, with seven Republicans joining all six Democrats in voting against it.
Rep. David Hawk said the fact that a fiscal cost is associated with the bill, and that no funds to support any of its costs were included in the budget passed Wednesday, greatly diminish chances of it going before the full house.
'Stranger things have happened,' Hawk told News Channel 11 when asked whether the bill sponsored by William Lamberth (R-Portland) might still make its way to a floor vote.
'I've seen bills come out from behind a budget document that I did not expect. I don't know what the 11th-hour machinations may be, because I haven't had this conversation with the sponsor of the legislation. But it doesn't look like that bill is going to move forward in this calendar year.'
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The bill's fiscal note reckoned that up to $1.1 billion in federal education funding could be at risk if the federal government determined the measure violated federal law. Typically, legislators would look for assurances that cost would not come to fruition, or find funds to cover those costs in the event they did.
'We'll have pieces of legislation that will pop up from time to time that will say, if this bill passes, it could jeopardize federal funding,' Hawk said. 'We've seen that in transportation funding. We've seen it in Department of Human Services funding.
'It can do that, and the concerns are real. There are some realistic concerns that if you were to have to backfill that $1 billion with state funds, what does that look like?'
Opponents, including some Republicans, have called the bill inhumane and said it would represent an unfunded mandate for school systems as they met requirements to document each enrolling student's legal status.
They don't do that now, largely because the 1982 Plyler v Doe Supreme Court decision prohibited any public schools in the U.S. from denying a child education based their citizenship or legal residency status.
Supporters, including Senate sponsor Bo Watson (R-Hixson), have acknowledged passage would likely lead to federal court battles and potentially to Tennessee arguing for a reversal of that decision.
Watson and other supporters have said the cost of providing English Language Learner courses has risen exponentially in Tennessee and argued that undocumented students likely represent a large portion of that cost. They've touted the bill, which gives systems the option of charging tuition to undocumented students but doesn't mandate it, as a way for school systems to recoup some of that expense.
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Public education groups from superintendents' organizations and the Tennessee School Boards Association to principals' organizations have publicly opposed the bill. Several local school leaders have told News Channel 11 they would not deny enrollment to any student who lived in their districts.
Lamberth did not move for the bill to be advanced in any House Finance, Ways, and Means subcommittees this week. Most other bills that haven't yet passed moved through that subcommittee and through the full Finance, Ways, and Means committee and on to the full House calendar this week.
That said, it's an open question whether President Donald Trump's administration would withhold federal education funding from Tennessee if the bill became law.
'I'm going to surmise that the sponsors of the legislation, the prime sponsor of the legislation and both the House and the Senate are having those conversations with our federal officials to see what the the realistic potential loss of revenue could be,' Hawk said. 'They may have got an answer that said, put a pause on it this year and see what we can do next year, so that could very well have played out.'
Hawk was careful to note that whatever conversations might be taking place about the bill's future for this session don't include him.
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