The District of Columbia started a new 36-month SNAP time-limit clock on June 1, 2026, and Tennessee’s current period runs through Dec. 31, 2027. In both places, able-bodied adults 18 to 64 with no child under 14 in the household can get only three months of food stamps in three years unless they meet a work rule.
The 2025 law rewrote who counts as an able-bodied adult
The exceptions list changed in Public Law 119-21, the budget law signed July 4, 2025. Its section 10102 exempts people under 18 or over 65, a parent or other household member responsible for a dependent child under 14, people medically certified as unfit for work, pregnant women, and now an Indian, an Urban Indian or a California Indian.
USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service spelled out the other side in an Oct. 3, 2025 memo signed by Ronald Ward, Acting Associate Administrator for SNAP. The age ceiling is 64, the child exception shrank from under 18 to under 14, and the exceptions for veterans, homeless people and young adults who aged out of foster care were removed. The changes took effect on enactment…