All legislation is available on the TN General Assembly website. To track a bill, you can use the search engine to enter the bill number, making sure to use the correct prefix: HB for House Bill and SB for Senate Bill. There are several ways to find bills:

1. Use the search engine to enter a keyword or the bill number. ​

2. If you know the sponsor of the bill, you can search for it by visiting the profile of the Representative or Senator. Go to > Legislators > House Members > [Rep. Name] > Bills (located on the right side of the screen).

3. Once you’ve found the legislation you want to track, you can use the "My Bills" page to create a profile on the TN General Assembly website. This feature allows you to compile all the bills you want to monitor on a single page for easy reference.

To view the full text of a bill, click on the House Bill or Senate Bill number on the bills page. Make sure you are looking at the latest version by checking for any amendments added to the legislation through the amendments tab.

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Note: Amendments are only visible on the website after they have been reviewed in committee. This means that the public cannot access amendments before they are presented and voted on in committee on the TN General Assembly Website. To address this transparency issue, the House has created the "TN General Assembly Dashboard" for public access. See below for more details.

The "Dashboard" is a separate website created by the House to enhance public transparency. It allows you to view amendments to legislation as soon as they are filed, rather than waiting until they pass through committee.

 

Please note that the Dashboard only provides access to amendments for House committees. Amendments presented in Senate committees are not available to the public until they are discussed in committee meetings.

 

To view amendments - Select the calendar icon in the top right corner > Select the appropriate date the committee will be meeting > Select the Committee Name > choose the Bill Number > click on "View More"  > select "Amendments." We also recommend checking the supplemental documents tab for additional information.

Definition: A piece of legislation, usually very short, that reveals the true contents of a bill via an amendment that "makes the bill". 

In the state of Tennessee, it is required that any bill being presented must only contain contents that is relevant to the titles that are pulled from code for that specific piece. Sometimes, legislators know they want to file legislation on a specific topic but fail to have language drafted in time to meet the filing deadlines. When this happens they create what is called a caption bill. Captions bills are easily spotted as they are usually very short in nature and only change a very minor portion of code while the containing a lengthy list of titles.