Rules of Gold in Tennessee

Tennessee has not yet enacted a statute recognizing gold or silver coinage as legal tender for payment of debts. SB 985 (114th General Assembly, 2025-2026, lead Sen. Steve Southerland) — the Tennessee Bullion Depository Act — would (a) make gold and silver coinage legal tender in Tennessee at spot price (no compelled acceptance), (b) establish a comprehensive bullion depository framework covering Au/Ag/Pt/Pd/rhodium for both public and private custody, (c) authorize the state tax commissioner to accept gold and silver coins for tax payments and require the state to purchase received coins at spot price, and (d) amend TCA Title 9 (Public Funds), Title 45 Chapter 2 (Banking), and Title 67 (Taxation). Pending in committee as of capture (2026-04-26). If enacted, Tennessee would join the legal-tender state cluster AND become one of the most COMPLETE sound-money jurisdictions in the dataset — combining its already-enacted state-treasury PM-reserve authorization (HB 1479/2023, see depository field below) with new legal-tender + depository + tax-payment + no-compelled-acceptance language.

Tennessee has authorized a state bullion depository for state-treasury-directly-owned precious-metals reserves via HB 1479 (Rep. Monty Fritts) / SB 529 (Sen. Adam Lowe), signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee on or about 2023-03-24. The law authorizes the State Treasurer to "purchase and sell gold or precious metal bullion or specie that will be directly owned by the state" and requires that "physical gold and precious metal purchased under these acts to be custodied by the state treasurer in a state depository, and maintained in a vault within the state depository's banking facilities in accordance with accepted industry standards for secure storage, and within the geographical boundaries of Tennessee." Vote was unanimous: House 98-0 and Senate 33-0. Notable historical position: Tennessee's HB 1479 (March 2023) preceded New Hampshire's HB 302 (May 2025) by approximately two years, making Tennessee the first US state in the modern era to statutorily authorize the State Treasurer to hold physical precious metals as state-owned reserves. (NH HB 302 added Bitcoin + PM authorization, while TN HB 1479 is PM-only.) SB 168 (Sen. Paul Baily, 2025) would create a restricted account/mechanism to facilitate the purchase-and-sale operations under the 2023 law. SB 985 (2025-2026, see legal-tender field) would expand the framework to public+private custody. Implementation status: not yet operational. The Treasurer has not publicly reported any actual acquisitions of gold or silver under HB 1479 as of capture (2026-04-26), making the depository "authorized-not-operational" — parallel to FL HB 999, LA Act 304, and NH HB 302's statutorily-authorized-but-not-yet-implemented status.

Same statutory basis as the depository field above — HB 1479 (2023) authorizes the Tennessee State Treasurer to purchase and hold gold and precious metal bullion or specie that will be directly owned by the state, custodied in a state depository within Tennessee's geographical boundaries. Treasurer David Lillard, Jr. has held the office since 2009 and has been publicly recognized for restructuring TCRS (the state pension system) into a hybrid plan, but no public announcement of actual PM acquisitions under HB 1479 has been identified through 2026-04-26. The reserve framework awaits implementation infrastructure that SB 168 (2025, Sen. Paul Baily) would establish — a restricted account specifically dedicated to facilitating purchase-and-sale operations under the 2023 statute. Tennessee's reserve-authorization posture is among the most-developed in the dataset (along with NH HB 302 and the pending SD SB 112), but actual physical acquisition has not occurred.

The Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System (TCRS, ~$70B AUM) — administered by the Tennessee Department of Treasury under Treasurer Lillard's leadership — was restructured into a hybrid (defined-benefit + defined-contribution) plan recognized as among the more innovative US public pension reforms. TCRS publishes a comprehensive annual financial report covering investments across standard institutional categories (public equities, fixed income, real estate, alternatives) without enumerating physical-precious-metals exposure as a discrete line item. The 2023 PM-reserve authorization (HB 1479) operates at the State Treasurer's office level, not within TCRS — i.e., HB 1479 reserves would be state-treasury-owned, separate from pension-trust assets. Field marked `No-public-disclosure` rather than definitive `No` because the alternatives sleeve composition is not fully enumerated in publicly-available summary documents — physical PM exposure is presumed minimal-to-zero but cannot be ruled out without ACFR-level review.