Tennessee

One-party consent

Tennessee is a one-party consent jurisdiction: a participant in the conversation may record it without telling the others.

The part that catches people out

Our reading, not verified text. Everything in this section is editorial judgment about how the statute works. Unlike the statute above, the reading itself has not been checked against a source.

Tennessee remains one-party. Beware a 2018 bill (HB 1528) that would have required all parties' consent and is still served as a PDF from the legislature's own site — it did not pass, and anything reading bill PDFs as law will get this wrong.

Where this comes from

Published from a fixed edition. No source for this state can be fetched and re-read — the only copy available is a frozen archive of Tennessee Code Annotated, 2024 edition (captured 11 July 2025). Re-checking it would report "unchanged" forever, so unlike every other entry here this one cannot tell you the law has moved. It is published because the rule is well settled and the omission was less useful than the caveat; treat the date on the edition, not the date below, as the age of this text. We keep probing for a live government source on every run.

Federal floor

Federal law permits recording with one party's consent unless the recording is made to commit a crime or tort. Federal law is the FLOOR; a state may and many do require more. Where an interstate call touches two states with different rules, the safe assumption is the stricter one. See 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(d).

Reference information, not legal advice. Statutes change and courts read them differently; confirm the current text with the linked primary source and counsel licensed in the jurisdiction before relying on it.

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