Tennessee

Tennessee Recording Laws (2026): One-Party Consent Rules

By Recording Law Editorial TeamPublished June 5, 202614 min read

Tennessee is a one-party consent state under Tenn. Code Ann. section 39-13-601: any participant in a wire, oral, or electronic communication may record without notifying the other parties. Recording a conversation you are not part of is a Class D felony under section 39-13-602 carrying up to 12 years and a $5,000 fine. Victims may also bring a civil action under Tenn. Code Ann. Title 40, Chapter 6, Part 3 (the civil remedy formerly at section 39-13-603, repealed May 28, 2024 by Public Chapter 1045 of 2024), where the statutory minimum is $10,000.

Tennessee recording law at a glance

Question	Answer
Consent rule	One-party consent
Controlling statute	Tenn. Code Ann. section 39-13-601
Can you record your own calls?	Yes, without notifying the other party
Criminal penalty	Class D felony, 2 to 12 years, fine up to $5,000
Civil minimum	$10,000 statutory minimum plus actual damages, punitives, attorney fees (Title 40, Ch. 6, Pt. 3; former section 39-13-603 repealed May 2024)
Civil SOL	2 years from discovery
Hidden cameras	Class A misdemeanor (base); Class E felony if victim is minor or image distributed (section 39-13-605)
Recording police	Likely permitted; no binding Sixth Circuit precedent

For more on specific recording contexts, see the in-depth guides below.

Recording in-person conversations in Tennessee

Under Tenn. Code Ann. section 39-13-601, it is lawful to record any wire, oral, or electronic communication you are a party to, or that one party has consented to, without telling anyone else. The statute covers face-to-face oral communications, but only those where the speaker has a reasonable expectation that the conversation is not being intercepted. A conversation spoken loudly in a crowded restaurant or on a public sidewalk generally carries no such expectation, so recording it does not require participant consent. Closing a door or lowering a voice in an otherwise public setting can establish a privacy expectation.

Recording becomes a Class D felony when you intercept a conversation you are not part of and no participant has consented, or when you use or disclose a recording you knew was obtained illegally.

a delivery driver in a uniform standing at a front door step holding a small cardboard package, captured from a low door

One important limit runs through federal ECPA at 18 U.S.C. section 2511(2)(d): a participant may not claim the one-party defense if the recording is made for the purpose of committing a criminal or tortious act. The Sixth Circuit applied this carve-out in Boddie v. American Broadcasting Cos., 881 F.2d 267 (6th Cir. 1989), which is binding in Tennessee. Documenting harassment or preserving an oral agreement is lawful. Recording to set up extortion or blackmail is not, even as a participant.

Recording phone calls in Tennessee

The same one-party rule applies to landline calls, cell phone calls (section 39-13-604 supplies a parallel Class D felony for cellular and cordless interception), VoIP and conferencing platforms such as Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet, and video calls with audio. Tennessee imposes no statutory beep-tone requirement and no oral disclosure requirement on private parties.

side profile of a woman in a business blouse holding a smartphone to her ear mid-call, walking through a sunlit office h

When a Tennessee caller is on the phone with someone in an all-party consent state, the safest course is to obtain consent from every participant before recording. States that typically require all-party consent include California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington. The rule on which state's law controls a multistate call varies by court; the conservative answer is to treat the stricter state as controlling.

Tennessee businesses recording customer or employee calls face no state disclosure mandate, though many still announce the recording to handle cross-border calls cleanly. Recordings that retain personally identifiable information may also fall under the Tennessee Information Protection Act (TIPA), effective July 1, 2025, which governs consumer data retention and deletion practices.

For a deeper look, see Tennessee Phone Call Recording Laws.

Hidden cameras, doorbells, and nanny cams

Tenn. Code Ann. section 39-13-605 governs unlawful photography. It applies only when the subject has a reasonable expectation of privacy AND the photograph either (a) would offend or embarrass an ordinary person and was taken for sexual arousal or gratification, or (b) captures the unclothed intimate area or the person engaged in sexual activity. Both elements must be present; a privacy expectation alone is not enough.

The base offense is a Class A misdemeanor (up to 11 months 29 days, fine up to $2,500). The offense is elevated to a Class E felony (1 to 6 years, fine up to $3,000) if the victim is a minor or the actor distributes the image, and conviction under specified subsections triggers sex-offender registration.

A Ring doorbell capturing porch visitors, a nanny cam in a common room, a dashcam on a public road, or a security camera in a parking lot does not trigger section 39-13-605 because these locations carry no reasonable expectation of privacy. If the camera also captures audio, section 39-13-601 still applies, but the homeowner is a participant, satisfying the one-party rule. The FTC v. Ring LLC settlement (FTC Matter No. 2023113, May 2023) governs vendor-side cloud review, AI training, and human access to customer video, and provides a practical baseline for choosing camera vendors.

Note: Tenn. Code Ann. section 39-13-609, which some older guides mislabel an "AI photographing" statute, is actually the Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act, restricting law-enforcement drone use. It has no bearing on private cameras or AI image generation.

For more detail, see Tennessee Voyeurism and Hidden Camera Laws and Tennessee Security Camera Laws.

Penalties for illegal recording in Tennessee

Tennessee's combined criminal and civil exposure for unlawful interception is among the strongest in the country. The same recording can produce a felony charge and a civil judgment simultaneously.

Criminal penalties

Offense	Statute	Class	Penalty
Wiretapping or illegal interception	section 39-13-602	Class D felony	2 to 12 years; fine up to $5,000
Disclosing illegally obtained communications	section 39-13-602	Class D felony	2 to 12 years; fine up to $5,000
Cellular or cordless interception	section 39-13-604	Class D felony	2 to 12 years; fine up to $5,000
Unlawful photography (base)	section 39-13-605	Class A misdemeanor	Up to 11 mo. 29 d.; fine up to $2,500
Unlawful photography (distribution or minor)	section 39-13-605	Class E felony	1 to 6 years; fine up to $3,000

Range I (standard offender) for a Class D felony is 2 to 4 years; Range II is 4 to 8 years; Range III is 8 to 12 years (section 40-35-112).

Civil liability

The civil remedy for wiretap violations is found in Tenn. Code Ann. Title 40, Chapter 6, Part 3. The former civil action section, 39-13-603, was repealed effective May 28, 2024 by Public Chapter 1045 of 2024 (SB 2221), and those provisions were consolidated into the wiretapping framework at Title 40, Chapter 6, Part 3. The substantive remedies are unchanged: an aggrieved person may recover the greatest of (a) actual damages plus the violator's profits; (b) $100 per day of violation; or (c) $10,000 statutory minimum, plus punitive damages for willful violations, reasonable attorney fees and costs, and injunctive or declaratory relief. The statute of limitations is 2 years running from the date the claimant first had a reasonable opportunity to discover the violation, not from the date of the recording itself.

A complete defense applies for good-faith reliance on a court warrant or order, a grand jury subpoena, or a statutory authorization. The reliance must be genuine and contemporaneous.

a journalist seated across a small wooden table from an interview subject in a quiet office, a small digital voice recor

Recording the police in Tennessee

Most Tennessee district courts recognize a citizen's right to record police in public by analogy to binding decisions in other circuits. The legal architecture, however, deserves candor: the Sixth Circuit, which covers Tennessee, has no published decision announcing a First Amendment right of citizens to record police performing public duties.

Crawford v. Geiger, 656 F. App'x 190 (6th Cir. 2016), the closest case on point, is unpublished (Federal Appendix) and persuasive only. The panel affirmed denial of qualified immunity to deputies who arrested plaintiffs for recording a police encounter, but it did not announce a circuit-wide right. Hils v. Davis, 52 F.4th 997 (6th Cir. 2022), is published but different in scope: it holds that police officers themselves lack a First Amendment right to record their own internal misconduct interviews. It does not address civilian recording.

Tennessee courts and litigants cite Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78 (1st Cir. 2011); Fields v. City of Philadelphia, 862 F.3d 353 (3d Cir. 2017); Turner v. Lieutenant Driver, 848 F.3d 678 (5th Cir. 2017); and ACLU of Illinois v. Alvarez, 679 F.3d 583 (7th Cir. 2012), all persuasive. Qualified-immunity outcomes therefore vary in Tennessee. A separate, simpler floor applies: Tennessee one-party consent independently permits any citizen who is in conversation with an officer to record that conversation.

Practical limits apply regardless of the constitutional posture: do not physically interfere with police operations, do not trespass to obtain a better angle, and follow lawful orders to step to a safe distance.

The Tennessee Open Meetings Act (Tenn. Code Ann. section 8-44-101 et seq.) requires most government meetings to be open to the public, and recording at city commission meetings, school board sessions, public hearings, and legislative proceedings is generally permitted. Body-worn camera footage is presumptively public under Tenn. Code Ann. section 10-7-503, except that section 10-7-504(u) makes footage confidential when recorded inside a private residence not under criminal investigation, a state-licensed healthcare or mental-health facility, or a K-12 school. The exemption is location-based, not content-based.

For a deeper treatment, see Tennessee Laws on Recording Police.

Special topics in Tennessee

The ELVIS Act: AI voice protection

The Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act of 2024 (ELVIS Act), codified at Tenn. Code Ann. section 47-25-1101 et seq. (Public Chapter 588 of 2024, HB 2091 / SB 2096), signed March 26, 2024, and effective July 1, 2024, made Tennessee the first state in the nation to extend right-of-publicity protection to a person's voice against unauthorized AI imitation. The Act covers simulated or AI-generated voices that are readily identifiable as a particular individual, creates liability for anyone who makes available a tool or service whose primary purpose is unauthorized production of an identifiable voice or likeness, and provides injunctive relief, actual damages, punitive damages, and attorney fees. Fictional uses falsely presented as authentic are not protected, but news, public affairs, satire, and fair-comment uses are. A lawful one-party recording under section 39-13-601 can still become an ELVIS Act violation if the recording is then used to train or generate an AI voice clone of an identifiable Tennessean without authorization.

2025 Preventing Deepfake Images Act

The Preventing Deepfake Images Act (Public Chapter 466 of 2025, HB 1299 / SB 1346), signed May 9, 2025, and effective July 1, 2025, amends Tenn. Code Ann. Title 39 Chapter 17. It creates a Class E felony (1 to 6 years; fine up to $3,000) for intentional disclosure, threat to disclose, or solicitation to disclose an intimate digital depiction without consent with intent to harm the subject. The offense is enhanced to a Class C felony (3 to 15 years; fine up to $10,000) where the creation or distribution could reasonably affect administrative, legislative, or judicial proceedings or facilitate violence. The civil cause of action allows recovery of actual damages or liquidated damages of $150,000, plus punitive damages, attorney fees, and injunctive relief; plaintiffs may proceed under a pseudonym. Consent to creation does not equal consent to disclosure; the Act requires a signed written agreement for valid consent.

Workplace recording and the NLRB

Tennessee one-party consent permits an employee to record any workplace conversation they participate in, including meetings with HR or management. The employer's ability to prohibit recording is constrained federally: Stericycle, Inc. and Teamsters Local 628, 372 NLRB No. 113 (Aug. 2, 2023), holds that a blanket no-recording rule is presumptively unlawful unless narrowly tailored and supported by a substantial business interest, because Section 7 of the NLRA protects concerted activity that recording often serves. NLRB General Counsel Memo 25-05 (Feb. 14, 2025) changed only prosecutorial posture and did not overrule Stericycle. NLRB General Counsel Memo 25-07 (June 25, 2025) is narrowly scoped to surreptitious recording of collective-bargaining sessions. For more, see Tennessee Workplace Recording Laws.

Federal overlay: ECPA, FCC, TAKE IT DOWN Act

ECPA (18 U.S.C. sections 2510-2522) sets a one-party federal floor that mirrors Tennessee law; it does not preempt stricter state statutes. FCC Declaratory Ruling 24-17 (Feb. 8, 2024) treats AI-generated voices in robocalls as "artificial or prerecorded voice" under the TCPA, requiring prior express consent for calls to Tennessee numbers; FCC Order 24-24 (the one-to-one consent rule) was vacated by the Eleventh Circuit, Insurance Marketing Coalition Ltd. v. FCC, No. 24-10277 (11th Cir. Jan. 24, 2025), mandate issued April 30, 2025. The TAKE IT DOWN Act (S. 146, 119th Congress, signed May 19, 2025) criminalized knowing publication of nonconsensual intimate visual depictions; its platform notice-and-removal compliance deadline of May 19, 2026, has now passed and the obligation is in full effect. The Tennessee 2025 Deepfake Act and the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act operate as parallel frameworks: the federal Act creates a platform removal duty and a federal criminal offense; the Tennessee Act creates a state criminal offense and a civil cause of action with pseudonym protection.

reporter in three-quarter view holding a small handheld microphone toward a person speaking at a podium, both visible fr

Recent legal developments

July 1, 2024: ELVIS Act (Tenn. Code Ann. section 47-25-1101 et seq., Public Chapter 588 of 2024) effective, making Tennessee the first state with AI voice and likeness protection.
May 28/July 1, 2024: Public Chapter 1045 of 2024 (SB 2221) revised business-vendor disclosure provisions in the wiretap statute; the one-party consent rule was unchanged.
August 2, 2023: Stericycle, Inc., 372 NLRB No. 113, set the current test for employer no-recording rules under the NLRA.
May 2023: FTC v. Ring LLC settled for $5.8 million, establishing vendor-side standards for camera cloud access and AI training.
July 1, 2025: Preventing Deepfake Images Act (Public Chapter 466 of 2025) effective, adding Class E / Class C criminal penalties and a $150,000 liquidated-damages civil cause of action for nonconsensual intimate digital depictions.
July 1, 2025: Tennessee Information Protection Act (TIPA) effective, covering personal data including recordings linked to identifiable individuals.
May 19, 2026: Federal TAKE IT DOWN Act platform compliance deadline passed; covered platforms must remove nonconsensual intimate depictions within 48 hours of valid notice.

Tennessee recording laws in depth

By type of recording

By place or relationship

More Tennessee laws

This article is general legal information, not legal advice. Recording laws change and apply differently to each situation. For advice about your situation, consult a licensed Tennessee attorney.

More Tennessee Laws

Sources and References

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(uscode.house.gov).gov
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(media.ca11.uscourts.gov).gov
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(congress.gov).gov
(mtas.tennessee.edu)
(ecfr.gov).gov
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