language: en · status: in-force · last checked: 2026-09-19

Tennessee — Data Accessibility, Transparency and Accountability Act (Tenn. Code Ann. §§49-1-701 to 49-1-708)

Tennessee's student-data statute (Title 49, Chapter 1, Part 7), enacted by Acts 2014, ch. 905. It binds the Department of Education and LEAs throughout, and in §49-1-708 — the Student Online Personal Protection Act — binds operators directly.

Text source. The statute text in this folder is reproduced from Justia, a third-party republisher, because the primary source is not machine-readable — see the fact document's Meta section and Sources below. Cite the T.C.A. section numbers, and check exact wording against the official code before relying on it.

Applicability to EdTech

Two provisions reach a supplier directly, and one of them is unusual.

§49-1-706 requires written consent before biometric collection. A state agency or educational institution must obtain written consent from parents — or from the student if eighteen or over — before collecting individual student biometric data, unless state or federal law explicitly mandates it ((a)). It goes further than consent: the institution may not accept a grant that would require collecting such data ((b)), and no state or national assessment requiring it may be adopted or administered ((c)). For any product with face, iris, voice or hand recognition this is the governing provision.

§49-1-708 is the operator regime, in the SOPIPA family: no targeted advertising, no profile amassing outside K-12 school purposes, no sale or rent of a student's information, and no disclosure of covered information outside the enumerated grounds ((a)(1)–(a)(4)), plus reasonable security and deletion on a school's or LEA's request ((c)). Deletion here runs to "a reasonable time period" rather than a fixed clock, unlike Georgia's 45 days or North Carolina's.

Note the enforcement route: a violation of §49-1-708 is an unfair or deceptive act under the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act of 1977, actionable by the Attorney General with that Act's remedies available ((g)).

Key obligations at a glance

Operators (§49-1-708)

• No targeted advertising from covered information — (a)(1); no profile amassing outside K-12 school purposes — (a)(2).
• No sale or rent of a student's information — (a)(3); no disclosure outside the six enumerated grounds — (a)(4).
• Reasonable security appropriate to the nature of the covered information, and deletion on request — (c).
• Permitted: product maintenance and improvement, adaptive learning, recommendation engines not driven by payment, and de-identified use including in marketing — (b), (e), (f)(2).
• General-audience services are outside the section — (f)(3).

Biometrics (§49-1-706)

• Written consent before collecting individual student biometric data — (a).
• No grant may be pursued or accepted that requires collection in breach of (a) — (b).
• No assessment requiring such collection may be adopted or administered — (c).

Collection bans and access

• LEAs and schools must not collect student data on political affiliation, religion, voting history or firearms ownership — §49-1-705.
• Department duties over the data inventory and governance — §49-1-703.
• Parents' and guardians' right to inspect their children's education records, and the model student records policy — §49-1-704.

Contents

Licence

The reproduced text is Tenn. Code Ann. §§49-1-701 to 49-1-708, enacted by the Tennessee General Assembly. No copyright subsists in this text. In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 590 U.S. 255 (2020), the Supreme Court held: "Under what has been dubbed the government edicts doctrine, officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of—and therefore cannot copyright—the works they create in the course of their official duties." It went on: "judges—and, we now confirm, legislators—may not be considered the 'authors' of the works they produce in the course of their official duties as judges and legislators. That rule applies regardless of whether a given material carries the force of law." (slip opinion, pp. 1 and 5–6, read 2026-10-01.) The Court's ruling concerned an annotated code published by LexisNexis for the State, the same arrangement as the Tennessee Code Annotated.

The text is taken from Justia, a commercial republisher, because the official LexisNexis edition is not machine-readable. Justia cannot own the statute text, and the corpus excludes Justia's editorial apparatus (Annotations, Research References, Law reviews, Hierarchy Notes); it keeps only the statute and its History credits, which cite session laws. Justia's Terms of Service (Internet Archive capture 2026-09-26) do bind users of its site: "12. NO RESALE OF SERVICE You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade, resell or exploit for any commercial purposes, any portion of the Service". That is a contract term about Justia's service, not a copyright in the statute, and it is a reason to re-source this text from the official edition if a route opens.

Public-domain text carries no conditions. The corpus attributes it all the same: the {.meta} provenance line on each section names the publisher, the Sources section links the official text, and the Meta section describes what the builder changed (markup and anchors only, with Justia's editorial matter excluded). Nothing here suggests that the Tennessee General Assembly or Justia endorses the corpus.

Related

• Georgia §§20-2-660 to 20-2-668 — the closest sibling, also third-party sourced
• California SOPIPA — the model for §49-1-708
• Illinois BIPA · Texas CUBI — the biometric regimes §49-1-706 should be read against
• SDPC state terms — Tennessee publishes no populated Exhibit G, so its districts are on the national NDPA clauses

Sources

• Primary: Tennessee Code Annotated §§49-1-701 to 49-1-708, published for the State by LexisNexis — official public access. Not machine-readable: it serves a JavaScript bootstrap with no statute text to any non-browser client.
• Text reproduced from (third party): Justia — 2025 Code of Tennessee, Title 49, Ch. 1, Pt. 7. Per-section links are listed in the fact document's Sources section.