(The Center Square) – A bill requiring agencies to weigh the impact of new regulations passed the Georgia Senate, while a similar bill is moving through the Tennessee General Assembly.
Agencies would also review their rules every five years, according to House Bill 1247.
“With that type of analysis, lawmakers and other interested parties like AFP would be able to look at these things and say, ‘you know that type of regulation, no other state does that. That’s overburdensome,"” said Tony West, executive director of the Georgia chapter of Americans for Prosperity, in an interview with The Center Square. “That might be primed for either a bill to change, or at least lawmakers reach out to those agencies and say, ‘Hey, we’re looking at this."”
Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones pitched the tenets as part of 2025 Senate Bill 28, known as the Red Tape Rollback. It passed the Senate but did not make it to the House of Representatives.
The Red Tape Rollback provisions were added to House Bill 1247, named the Georgia Bureaucratic Deference Elimination bill. It codifies into Georgia code a U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned what is known as the Chevron doctrine. The legal tenet was established in the 1984 case Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., in which the Supreme Court directed federal courts to defer to agency legal interpretations if statutory language was ambiguous.
The 2024 decision said: “The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous; Chevron is overruled.”
The bill received support from business groups.
“Small businesses don’t have the time or resources to keep up with complex and ever-changing mandates,” said Hunter Loggins, Georgia director for the National Federation of Independent Businesses. “HB1247 brings balance, transparency, and accountability to the process and helps small business owners focus on growing their businesses, creating jobs, and serving their communities.”
The bill passed the Senate 48-2. Because the bill was amended in the Senate, it must go back to the House for approval.
Tennessee lawmakers are considering a similar regulatory bill called the Regulatory Freedom Act. The Senate Government Operations Committee advanced the bill on Wednesday.
The purpose of Senate Bill 2199 is “for us to know upfront the true impact of regulations and rules that we pass, not just beyond the impact to the wallet of the state and the taxpayer but the impact to the industries that we essentially pass these rules on to regulate,” said Calhoun Republican Adam Lowe.
The Tennessee Farm Bureau, Beacon Impact and the Tennessee Chapter of Americans for Prosperity testified in support of the bill.
“At its heart, the Regulatory Freedom Act is really a simple piece of legislation,” said Michael Lotfi, executive director of the Tennessee chapter of Americans for Prosperity. “It asks that agencies promulgate regulations affecting the livelihoods of everyone from your own barbers and hair stylists to the manufacturers who built the vehicles you drove to the capital this morning, understand the true economic burden of those regulations on these individuals and businesses.”
Sen. Charlane Oliver, D-Nashville, said she was concerned that it would create more work for administrative agencies.
“This creates on the back end a legislative process that we’ve already been through on the front end because the rules are only made because we made a law about it,” said Oliver, who voted against the bill.
The bill passed the Senate Government Operations Committee 6 to 1, with two members not voting. It moves to the State and Local Government Committee. The House version of the bill is in the Government Operations Committee.