Cell phone legislation in schools has moved faster than almost any other education policy in recent memory. As of early 2026, at least 37 states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws or policies requiring school districts to ban or restrict student cellphone use during the school day, and several more states are expected to act in their 2026 sessions.1 In 2025 alone, 23 states passed new restrictions. Six more had bills pending at the start of 2026, and 19 states had yet to act.
Florida started it. Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 379 in May 2023, banning phone use during instructional time and requiring schools to block social media on school Wi-Fi. Within two years, dozens of states had followed, and many went further than Florida did.
What the Laws Actually Require
The state laws vary in detail but share a common frame. Districts must adopt written policies prohibiting students from using personal electronic devices during some or all of the school day. “Devices” is defined broadly and typically covers cellphones, tablets, smartwatches, and similar technology. The scope of the restriction falls into two camps.
Instructional-Time Bans
The narrower approach restricts devices only during classroom instruction, leaving lunch, passing periods, and recess to local discretion. Indiana’s Senate Bill 185, signed in March 2024, follows this model, with exceptions for educational use, health needs, and emergencies. Utah’s original 2025 law, SB 178, restricted devices during “classroom hours,” defined as teacher-supervised instruction, and explicitly excluded lunch, recess, and time between classes.
Bell-to-Bell Bans
The broader and increasingly dominant approach covers the entire school day, including lunch, study halls, and passing periods. New York, Missouri, Virginia, and Texas have all adopted versions. Missouri’s Senate Bill 68 requires all public and charter schools to restrict personal electronic devices throughout the entire school day. Texas’s House Bill 1481, signed in June 2025, requires schools to either prohibit students from bringing devices to campus or to designate a method to securely store them.
Utah shows the direction of travel. Governor Spencer Cox criticized the state’s original classroom-only ban as too narrow, and the legislature passed SB 69 in early 2026 to expand it to a full bell-to-bell rule covering lunch, recess, and free periods. Cox signed it on March 18, 2026, with an effective date in fall 2026.
Notable State Laws
New York. Governor Kathy Hochul signed a statewide bell-to-bell restriction on May 9, 2025, through an amendment to Education Law Section 2803 embedded in the state budget. Every school district, charter school, and BOCES must adopt a written policy prohibiting student use of internet-enabled devices during both instructional and non-instructional time, including lunch and recess. The law allocated $13.5 million for storage solutions such as phone pouches. It also prohibits suspending a student solely for a phone policy violation and requires schools to publish annual enforcement reports that include demographic data and an analysis of any discipline disparities.
California. Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 3216, the Phone-Free School Act, on September 23, 2024. It requires every school district, charter school, and county office of education to adopt a policy limiting or prohibiting smartphone use during school hours by July 1, 2026, with exceptions for emergencies, perceived threats, medical needs, and educational purposes authorized by teachers or administrators.
Texas. House Bill 1481, signed June 20, 2025, required schools to adopt written policies by September 18, 2025. The Texas Education Agency allocated $20 million in grants for secure storage, distributed on a per-student basis: $12.50 per high school student, $10 per middle schooler, and $7.50 per elementary student. Rural and economically disadvantaged districts were prioritized.
Georgia. The state first passed the Distraction-Free Education Act banning devices for grades K–8, effective July 2026. Governor Brian Kemp then signed House Bill 1009 on May 5, 2026, extending the bell-to-bell ban to all high schools, effective for the 2027–28 school year.
Michigan. Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed Senate Bill 495 and House Bill 4141 on February 10, 2026, requiring districts to create action plans to keep cellphones away during class time, with implementation beginning in the 2026–27 school year.
Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania took a different route. Rather than mandating a ban, Senate Bill 700 amended the state’s School Safety and Mental Health grant program to make lockable smartphone bags an eligible expense. The program was funded at $100 million, with automatic base grants of $100,000 per school district and $70,000 for charter and technical schools. Participation is voluntary: schools must adopt an official ban to qualify for funding.
Exemptions Nearly Every Law Includes
Almost every state law carves out the same core categories of exemption:
- Students with individualized education programs (IEPs) or Section 504 plans
- Documented medical needs
- Emergencies
- Teacher-directed instructional use
Several states go further. Illinois and New York carve out exceptions for students who serve as primary caregivers for family members and for English language learners who need devices for translation.
How Enforcement Works
Most states leave storage decisions to local districts. The methods generally fall into three groups: magnetic locking pouches such as Yondr and Cyber Pouch, centralized collection where staff gather devices at the start of the day and store them in bins, and locker or backpack storage. New York City allocated $25 million in city funding, supplemented by $4 million from the state, and let individual schools choose between pouches and collection systems. It explicitly ruled out “out of sight” approaches like leaving phones in bookbags.
Limits on Discipline
A growing number of states have written the discipline side directly into the law. Illinois’s pending legislation prohibits fines, fees, law enforcement involvement, suspensions, and expulsions as tools for enforcing the ban. New York bars suspensions for phone policy violations alone. These provisions responded to early evidence from Florida’s rollout, where a study by David Figlio and Umut Özek through the National Bureau of Economic Research found that suspensions spiked by roughly 25% in the first year, with in-school suspensions for Black students rising by 30% at schools with high pre-ban phone use while rates for white and Hispanic students held steady. Suspension rates returned to pre-ban levels by the second year.
Federal Bills on School Phones
The cellphone movement has been overwhelmingly state-driven, but federal proposals have started to appear. In June 2025, Representatives Eugene Vindman and Jen Kiggans, both of Virginia, introduced two bipartisan bills:
- The Unplugged Schools Act, which would create a federal grant program for K–12 schools that implement bell-to-bell phone bans.
- The Mission Unplugged Act, which would mandate phone-free policies at all Department of Defense Education Activity schools.
Neither had advanced beyond introduction as of mid-2026. Vindman had also introduced the UNPLUGGED Act (H.R. 2700) in April 2025, which was referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce.
Legal Challenges
Legal challenges to school cellphone bans have been limited, and courts have consistently sided with schools. The rulings draw on long-established authority for educational institutions to regulate student conduct in the interest of order and learning.
In Koch v. Adams (2010), the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld a school’s confiscation of a student’s phone, affirming that school boards possess “broad discretion” in operating schools and that courts will not interfere absent a clear abuse of that discretion. In Price v. New York City Board of Education (2008), a New York appellate court upheld an outright ban on bringing cellphones to school, ruling that it was reasonably related to educational objectives and did not prevent parent-child communication outside school hours.
Legal scholars have raised possible First Amendment questions about students’ rights to receive information under Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), but have generally concluded that courts would uphold the restrictions because they regulate the device rather than the content of speech, and because most laws include exceptions for medical, educational, and emergency use. Fourth Amendment questions about device confiscation and access to private data have been raised, but no major case has yet tested those boundaries against modern state-level bans.
States Still Considering Legislation
Several states were still moving as of mid-2026.
Illinois. Senate Bill 2427 passed both chambers overwhelmingly in spring 2026, by votes of 102–3 in the House and 55–2 in the Senate. Governor JB Pritzker indicated he would sign it. The bill requires all school boards to adopt policies prohibiting wireless communication devices during the school day for the 2027–28 school year, with exceptions for medical needs, IEPs, and caregiver responsibilities. It bars suspensions, expulsions, and fines as enforcement tools.
Massachusetts. The Senate passed S. 2561, “An Act to promote student learning and mental health,” in July 2025, requiring all public school districts to prohibit personal electronic devices during the school day by fall 2026. The bill remained pending in the House.
Mississippi and Colorado. Mississippi continued to consider legislation. Colorado, rather than pursuing a statewide mandate, began offering $50,000 grants to districts that voluntarily adopt phone restriction policies.