House Republicans have delayed voting on a controversial bill allowing local school districts to exclude students based on citizenship status as the Tennessee legislature nears the end of this year's session. Public outcry across the state has brought Tennesseans out to rallies, protests and school walkouts, with opponents casting Republicans’ proposal as modern-day school segregation. House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland), the bill's House sponsor, says he’s checking with the Trump administration to fully grasp whether the bill would trigger a potential billion-dollar loss of federal school funding.
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“ I'm reaching somebody at the federal government, under the Trump administration, to find out if that really means that we could lose federal funds,” Lamberth tells the Scene Thursday. “ We've been on this journey for several months, and now we're right here toward the end. I really would like to get an answer to that question.”
The Senate passed its version of the bill 19-13 last week despite a rare split from GOP Sens. Richard Briggs, Todd Gardenhire, Mark Pody, Ferrell Haile, Page Walley, Becky Massey and Shane Reeves, who joined Democrats in voting no. Advocate Lynne McFarland was arrested by state troopers earlier this month for protesting the bill while it made its way through the Senate.
Now Lamberth is caught between a legal thicket, a funding cliff, pissed-off community leaders across the state, and protests inside and outside the gallery. The House legislation has been stuck in the body’s Finance, Ways and Means Committee since April 14. Before the committee could deliberate, Lamberth placed HB 793 "behind the budget," citing a $1.1 billion fiscal impact. Adopting the measure would likely violate federal discrimination protections guaranteed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, potentially costing the state all of its federal funding for schools.
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Throughout the week, rallies and protests across the state called on lawmakers to reject Lamberth’s bill. Lawmakers’ aggressive move to limit immigrants’ rights has also gained criticism from community leaders, from rural pastors of the Southern Christian Coalition to Rogersville City Schools ESL director Missy Testerman, the 2024 National Teacher of the Year. Hundreds marched in downtown Nashville Monday, led by nonprofit education and immigrant rights’ organizations.
"We're here today because we know our children are not disposable, and our movements are bound together by this simple fact," says Rachael Spriggs, the statewide director of power-building for the Equity Alliance, via a statement to the Scene. “This is a moment for unity — a fight for our futures. A future that is not dependent on a ZIP code, a status or your proximity to whiteness and power — but a future that is rooted in our right to freedom, which starts with the right to a safe, free and quality education."
House Majority Leader William Lamberth, April 2025
Emmie Wilkins, a 10-year-old Chattanoogan who interrupted an education hearing last month to protest the bill, continued her press tour Thursday at a Hamilton County School Board meeting. Wilkins’ efforts directly rebuke Sen. Bo Watson of Chattanooga, the bill’s bow-tied Senate sponsor.
The legislature passed its annual budget, a sprawling funding document close to $60 billion, on Wednesday, raising the possibility that lawmakers would again bring up HB 793 for a committee vote. Students, parents and faculty protested the immigration bill with walk-in events at Shwab Elementary School and Paragon Mills Elementary School on Thursday morning. Dan Mills Elementary School in Inglewood hosted its own walk-in on Wednesday. All three schools enroll a high percentage of immigrant students and explicitly cast the bill as modern-day school segregation by citizenship status.
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“These are spaces where teachers can openly support their students and talk about the love and care and concern that they have for their kids,” says Cathy Carrillo, an organizer with The ReMix TN who helped coordinate the events. “We decided to go ahead and organize our community to be very clear that Tennesseans do not support this type of legislation and that Nashville schools are welcoming to all of our students. Now we need the Metro Nashville school board to make it explicit that they will not participate in something like this.”
Carrillo says concerned parents, students and community members can show up to the next Metro Nashville Public Schools board meeting on April 22.
The air was tense at Thursday afternoon’s House Finance Ways and Means committee meeting. Lamberth moved in and out of the room as the meeting started, and attendees silently held signs in the gallery. Minutes before, Lamberth told reporters he would delay HB 793 until the following week pending answers from the Trump administration about potential fiscal impacts.
McFarland sat in the second row with several regular protesters, part of a local group called Nashville Non-Violence Liberation Movement, while lawmakers debated another controversial education bill that would enable a state takeover of Shelby County Schools.
