Tennessee
Tennessee will not appeal ruling over wildlife agents planting cameras
In May, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled against the state after wildlife agents trespassed onto private land and planted cameras to look for hunting violations. This week, the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office declined to file an appeal, meaning the ruling is affirmed. It’s a good first step in reclaiming Americans’ property rights.
State law allows officers of the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency (TWRA)—or any other state or federal wildlife agency—to “go upon any property, outside of buildings, posted or otherwise,” in order to “enforce all laws relating to wildlife.” As Reason first reported in 2022, TWRA agents interpreted this directive to trespass onto private lands at will; in at least two cases, agents then coordinated with federal wildlife officers to plant trail cameras without a warrant and without the property owner’s knowledge or permission. One man who found a camera on his land took it down, at which point agents raided his home and arrested him for “stolen government property.”
Under Supreme Court precedent dating back to a century-old Prohibition case, “open fields” do not receive the same constitutional protections as a person’s home and the “curtilage,” the area immediately around the home. In Hester v. United States (1924), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that “the protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ does not extend to open fields.”
The two Tennessean property owners sued in 2022, claiming that the state law violated the Tennessee Constitution. Article I, Section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution uses very similar language to the Fourth Amendment—only swapping out “effects” with “possessions”—but goes even further, adding “that general warrants, whereby an officer may be commanded to search suspected places, without evidence of the fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, whose offences are not particularly described and supported by evidence, are dangerous to liberty and ought not be granted.”
The district court agreed, finding that “Tennessee’s prohibition on unreasonable searches offers a broader guarantee of security for an individual’s real property than its federal counterpart.”
The state appealed the ruling, and in May 2024, the Tennessee Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s ruling. While the appeals court stopped short of finding the state law unconstitutional, as the district court had done, it nonetheless found the TWRA’s application of it “a disturbing assertion of power on behalf of the government that stands contrary to the foundations of the search protections against arbitrary governmental intrusions in the American legal tradition, generally, and in Tennessee, specifically.”
To appeal a judgment to the state supreme court, Tennessee code provides “60 days after the entry of the judgment.” The deadline for the state to appeal the decision in this case passed on July 9. (The Tennessee Attorney General’s office did not respond to Reason‘s request for comment.) As a result, the decision is now settled law in the state, although a separate case could make its way to the state supreme court in the future.
The ruling is great news for Tennesseans, as is the state’s decision to let it stand. It provides further protection against unwarranted intrusion and surveillance at the hands of government agents. But it’s only the first step in undoing a century of harmful jurisprudence.
After all, the ruling only applies to the state constitution, leaving the open fields doctrine untouched. As a result, any federal wildlife agent is still free to come onto your land with impunity and even plant cameras at will, so long as they keep a distance from your home.
The practice also varies by state law. As Reason documented in 2022, some states will only plant cameras on private property with a warrant or the owner’s permission, while others claim free rein to come onto private land and place cameras.
All is not lost: Tennessee joins several other states that have affirmed greater privacy protections than the Fourth Amendment allows. As far back as 1970, the Mississippi Supreme Court decided in Davidson v. State, “This right to be secure from invasions of privacy by government officials is a basic freedom in our Federal and State constitutional systems.” In 2018, the Vermont Supreme Court affirmed in State v. Dupuis that “Vermont’s Constitution establishes greater protection against search and seizure of ‘open fields’ than the U.S. Constitution, requiring that law enforcement officers secure warrants before searching open fields when the landowner demonstrates an expectation of privacy.”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – Isolated showers and storms over the next few days will make for more brilliant color displays across the sky.
Rainbows have been very common across Middle Tennessee for several evenings now. With all the recent rain, conditions have been ideal for fabulous displays of brilliant colors. Some of you have even reported seeing double rainbows. WSMV4 viewer, Leslie Whited, captured the one above, early Tuesday evening, July 14th.
To find out how double rainbows form, let’s first examine how a single rainbow occurs.
Single rainbows form when the sun, positioned behind you, has its light refracted through raindrops ahead of you.
Those raindrops bend sunlight as it passes into the drops. Then, some of that light reflects off the back of the drop and is bent one more time as it exits the drop. That entire process is called single reflection. Single reflection produces the primary or brightest rainbow.
Sometimes, some light reflects twice while in a raindrop before exiting. This is called double reflection. Double reflection produces a secondary rainbow. The order of colors within a secondary rainbow is a mirror image of the primary rainbow (i.e. the reverse). Secondary rainbows are not as bright as primary rainbows because less light is double reflected than is single reflected (i.e. some light is lost or attenuated every time light is reflected). Notice the fainter secondary rainbow in Leslie Whited’s double rainbow/storm picture at the top of this article.
The ideal time to see a rainbow is when the sun is relatively low in the sky (and has the best chance of being at your back). That translates to early morning or evening. Since in our current weather pattern, showers and storms are most numerous during the late afternoon and evening, that’s when you’ll have the best chance of seeing a rainbow through the rest of this week. If you’re very lucky, you might even see a double rainbow.
Happy sky watching!
For life-saving weather alerts, customized messages on conditions and forecasts, and videos detailing upcoming weather events, download the WSMV 4 First Alert Weather app for iPhone or Android. Have weather pictures or videos? Share them here.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – A Tennessee school district is crediting an AI teaching assistant program with helping students improve their TCAP English Language Arts (ELA) scores.
Scott Langford, the director of schools for Sumner County, said in a press release that a preliminary report shows that education tech company CourseMojo has been helping maintain student engagement “at the most rigorous point of the lesson.”
“Students take ownership of their own learning while teachers can measure individual student progress in real-time,” Langford said. “Teachers benefit from the feedback to connect students to the standards included in each activity.”
Sumner County schools conducted a pilot test of CourseMojo for sixth graders in six schools during the 2024-2025 school year. After finding an average 8 percentage point increase on the TCAP ELA assessment for those students, they decided to expand the program’s use to all middle school grades last academic year.
While usage of Coursemojo varied across schools, a preliminary analysis of the district’s 2026 TCAP ELA assessment data showed that groups with an average of 25 or more Coursemojo activities per student improved ELA proficiency by an average of 3.7 percentage points. Groups with little or no use of the program saw -0.2 percentage points during those assessments, the district said.
Eighth-graders had the “strongest gains,” the district said, after “stagnant performance for the last several years.” According to the district, those students who had an average of 25 or more Coursemojo activities had an average increase of 8.7 percentage points in proficiency.
Dacia Toll, co-founder and co-CEO of Coursemjojo, said that the “technology alone doesn’t improve student outcomes,” but that the success depends on how educators implement tools.
“Sumner County Schools has been incredibly thoughtful about integrating Coursemojo while keeping rigorous curriculum and great teaching at the center,” Toll said. “We’re proud to partner with a district that’s so committed to their own learning and to helping every student succeed.”
While the district boasts improved proficiency with the AI tool, it also said that its preliminary findings compare outcomes among school-grade groups with different levels of implementation, “rather than against schools that did not use the platform.”
More analyses are expected to be done with the final TCAP data.
Even with the help of the AI tool, the district was not the top in the state for proficiency increase in its TCAP ELA scores, according to state data.
However, district TCAP results show that from 2024 to 2026, the percentage of middle school students not meeting expectations decreased from 54.7% to 51.9%. The number of students meeting or exceeding expectations increased from 45.3% in 2024 to 48.1% in 2026 for ELA.
While that is an improvement, it remains unclear the exact influence Coursemojo had on those scores. And overall, the results show that less than half of Sumner County middle schoolers are proficient in ELA — a result that echoes statewide.
Copyright 2026 WSMV. All rights reserved.
The Tennessee Lottery offers several draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at July 13, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Powerball numbers from July 13 drawing
05-25-36-40-48, Powerball: 03, Power Play: 2
Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Lotto America numbers from July 13 drawing
06-07-24-29-51, Star Ball: 04, ASB: 02
Check Lotto America payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Cash 3 numbers from July 13 drawing
Morning: 2-1-5, Wild: 0
Midday: 9-7-0, Wild: 7
Evening: 3-0-2, Wild: 0
Check Cash 3 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Cash 4 numbers from July 13 drawing
Morning: 3-9-1-4, Wild: 1
Midday: 2-1-2-3, Wild: 2
Evening: 1-8-7-5, Wild: 9
Check Cash 4 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Daily Tennessee Jackpot numbers from July 13 drawing
13-17-20-22-31
Check Daily Tennessee Jackpot payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Tennessee Cash numbers from July 13 drawing
10-26-29-32-34, Bonus: 04
Check Tennessee Cash payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Powerball Double Play numbers from July 13 drawing
01-17-31-39-43, Powerball: 22
Check Powerball Double Play payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from July 13 drawing
19-36-38-43-48, Bonus: 03
Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
Are you a winner? Here’s how to claim your lottery prize
All Tennessee Lottery retailers will redeem prizes up to $599.
For prizes over $599, winners can submit winning tickets through the mail or in person at Tennessee Lottery offices. By mail, send a winner claim form, winning lottery ticket, a copy of a government-issued ID and proof of social security number to P.O. Box 290636, Nashville, TN 37229. Prize claims less than $600 do not require a claim form. Please include contact information on prizes claimed by mail in the event we need to contact you.
To submit in person, sign the back of your ticket, fill out a winner claim form and deliver the form, along with the ticket and government-issued ID and proof of social security number to any of these locations:
Nashville Headquarters & Claim Center: 26 Century Blvd., Nashville, TN 37214, 615-254-4946 in the (615) and (629) area, 901-466-4946 in the (901) area, 865-512-4946 in the (865) area, 423-939-7529 in the (423) area or 1-877-786-7529 (all other areas in Tennessee). Outside Tennessee, dial 615-254-4946. Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. This office can cash prizes of any amount.
Knoxville District Office: Cedar Springs Shopping Center, 9298 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37922, (865) 251-1900. Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. This office can cash prizes up to $199,999.
Chattanooga District Office: 2020 Gunbarrel Rd., Suite 106, Chattanooga, TN 37421, (423) 308-3610. Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. This office can cash prizes up to $199,999.
Memphis District Office: Chiles Plaza, 7424 U.S. Highway 64, Suite 104, Memphis, TN 38133, (901) 322-8520. Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. This office can cash prizes up to $199,999.
Check previous winning numbers and payouts at https://tnlottery.com/.
When are the Tennessee Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 9:59 p.m. CT Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 10:00 p.m. CT Tuesday and Friday.
- Cash 3, 4: Daily at 9:28 a.m. (Morning) and 12:28 p.m. CT (Midday), except for Sunday. Evening game daily, seven days a week, at 6:28 p.m. CT.
- Daily Tennessee Jackpot: 9:00 p.m. CT daily.
- Tennessee Cash: 10:34 p.m. CT Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
- Powerball Double Play: 10:30 p.m. CT Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 10:15 p.m. CT daily.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Tennessean editor. You can send feedback using this form.
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