Bills That Pass, Part 3

TFI bills that made it through

By the time legislative session started in 2025, the TFI board had landed on eight issues that we wanted to address for the year. Some of these were our own ideas, some were brought to us, and some were collaborative efforts with other organizations. They address an eclectic mix of issues, inspired by current events, macro trends, or personal passion projects. Those eight issues were:

1. Limiting / Clarifying the Emergency Powers of the Governor.

2. Limiting overreach from international policy-making organizations.

3. Limiting the powers of the TN Commissioner of Agriculture.

4. Limiting TN Agencies’ ability to trespass on private property.

5. Reducing regulation for cottage food producers in the state.

6. Removing artificial dyes from school lunch offerings.

7. Transparency requirements for lab-grown meat.

8. Clarifying the Mature Minor Doctrine in Tennessee law.

Of those eight issues, six of them passed in some form. Our attempt to limit the authority of the Commissioner of Agriculture died in a Senate committee, and our collaboration to limit state agencies’ trespass on private property was rolled until next session after massive pushback. Both of those will come back next year, but that’s another story. For now, let’s look at the bills that actually made it through.

1. Limiting / Clarifying the Emergency Powers of the Governor (SB27/HB324). We’ve written several newsletters about this, here and here, so we won’t go into it again in detail, but the short version is: With a small update to the law, the Governor will not be able to suspend constitutional rights in case of emergency. This bill went through many iterations over several years in a battle to return legislative authority to the legislature, so its passage is a huge win in our book. Between this and the bill that Jason Zachary passed which allows the legislature to override an executive order via joint resolution, we believe this issue is making good headway, and these two branches of government are headed back toward equilibrium.

2. Limiting overreach from international policy-making organizations (SB236/HB318). The core idea here is that a health policy council or international economic group based in Brussels, London, or even DC doesn’t necessarily know what’s best for Tennessee and her citizens. Tennessee’s government first and foremost reports to the people and must govern via our constitution — and that’s what this bill seeks to return to. We covered the bill in more detail in a previous newsletter, and our original version did not get through. Instead, in order to keep things simple, we encouraged them to co-sponsor a similar version that Chairman Rudd and Senator Hensley were running, and supported that bill through the committee process. We’re grateful that so many legislators in Nashville are doing this good work, and we have a chance to help coordinate efforts.

3. Reducing regulation for cottage food producers in the state (HB130/SB484). Over-regulating small businesses can make it difficult for them to survive, and this is increasingly true in agriculture, where small producers often face the same regulations that large producers do, even though the small producers may sell to a small group of people and keep a literal eye on their food production throughout its life cycle. In concert with the Westin Price Foundation, we were able to simplify some of the rules around cottage food production, specifically with regard to certain kinds of perishable foods. The goal is to encourage more fresh, healthy food in our communities by freeing up some of the regulatory framework around small-farm production. Hopefully we see more hobby farms and whole-food producers start popping up in the state as the regulations roll back.

4. Removing artificial dyes from school lunch offerings (HB134/SB476). Many artificial food dyes have been shown to have serious negative side effects for certain people, while offering no nutritional benefits. They’re mostly used to cover flaws or make drinks look good on the shelf. While the federal government is currently planning to limit the distribution of these dyes in the food supply, we thought it wise to also stop putting them into the school lunches that we provide to children in our public schools. While we considered removing all dyes, we started with just getting rid of Red40, which seems to be one of the worst offenders to children’s health. This bill was also a collaboration with the Westin Price Foundation, and we’re extremely grateful for their work on it!

5. Transparency requirements for lab-grown meat (HB804/SB931). We wanted to see movement on this issue since cell-cultured meat products are starting to be experimented with on a large scale. However, we didn’t have space in our bill slate for the year to put a plan together. Thankfully, Chairman Grills crafted this bill that hit all the points we were hoping to, requiring that lab-grown meat be transparently labeled as such, that it not be labeled as regular meat, and that the Agriculture department create a framework for testing and determining the safety of those products.

6. Clarifying the Mature Minor Doctrine in Tennessee law (HB826/SB895). The Mature Minor Doctrine is an idea in medicine that doctors use to determine when a minor is mature enough to make their own medical decisions. Tennessee courts had been operating under the “rule of sevens” for determining the agency of a minor regarding non-emergency care. That rule states, roughly, that for children under 7 a physician always needs parental consent for medical treatment, between 8-14 a physician generally needs parental consent, and between 15-17 a physician could assume that the minor could make their own medical decisions. This bill helped clarify that medical decisions for minors need to be made with the knowledge and consent of the minor’s parents, except in emergencies and other situations excepted by statute. Our original version of this bill did not get very far through the process, so we’re grateful to Representative Faison and Senator Haile for using their bill to help clean up the code on this issue.

If you stuck with us to the end, you may have noticed that several of these bills either didn’t originate with us or weren’t passed by our original sponsors. In a couple of cases, we didn’t even have a chance to review or amend the language before it passed. But as a small lobbying organization operating on a shoestring budget, this is our goal: to get policy goals through as efficiently as possible. We are interested in seeing good laws in Tennessee, so if someone else is doing that, we want to support them. If we’re running a similar bill to one that someone else is working on, we want to jump on board and limit confusion by merging efforts, even if it means dropping “our bill”. We want to build alliances, not break them. And we want the best outcome for Tennessee.

That said, we’re always looking to grow our team with more researchers, lobbyists, and policy professionals, and that requires cash. If you like what you see here and you’d like to support us in coming up with new ideas, bringing in new blood, and crafting legislation that can help Tennesseans in the next year and beyond, please support us! You can either subscribe to the newsletter or click here to donate directly to our work.

With session over and this helter-skelter recap finished, we’ll drop back to an infrequent posting schedule and just keep you up to date with TFI’s inner workings. We’re grateful for your time and your support, and we’ll plan to get back to weekly posting late in the year as session starts to ramp up again.