Written comments on four state SNAP purchase restrictions must reach USDA on or before October 15, 2026. The agency published request-for-comment notices on September 15 for the Ohio, South Carolina, Montana and Virginia projects, each of which would take items such as soda, sweetened drinks or candy off the list of what a SNAP card can buy. In Ohio, the comment process has already moved the start date.
The notices behind the date
Each state’s notice appears in the Federal Register under the Food and Nutrition Administration, the USDA agency that runs SNAP. Ohio’s notice says written comments “must be received on or before October 15, 2026.” The notices for South Carolina and Montana carry the same date and the same publication day, and Virginia’s page on the agency’s site lists a September 15 request for comments with an October 15 deadline as well.
All four are signed by Shiela Corley, acting administrator of the Food and Nutrition Administration. USDA’s separate waiver table, read on October 1, shows North Dakota with a November 1 target alongside these states, but no North Dakota notice was among those read for this article, so nothing here says whether that project has a comment window.
How a comment reaches the agency
The Ohio notice points commenters to regulations.gov, with instructions that refer to docket FNA-2026-0309-0004, and to an email address, [email protected], with the subject line “OH SNAP Demonstration Project.” The South Carolina notice uses docket FNA-2026-0311 and the subject line “SC SNAP Demonstration Project.” Montana’s runs under docket FNA-2026-0306 with the subject line “MT SNAP Demonstration Project.”
The pattern is the same each time: one docket, one shared email inbox, and a subject line that tells the agency which state a comment is about. A comment about Ohio sent under the Montana subject line could be routed to the wrong project, so the subject line is worth getting right alongside the deadline. The Ohio notice, as read for this article, gives no phone number for comments; the regulations.gov docket and the shared inbox are the two routes it describes.
What Ohio’s notice adds to the list
Ohio’s request, as the notice records it, would change the SNAP definition of food for purchase to exclude sugar-sweetened beverages and also “fountain drinks.” The fountain-drink language is the part of the notice that goes beyond the bottled and canned drinks most people picture in a soda restriction. It would reach a cup filled at a convenience-store dispenser.
South Carolina’s notice lists a wider set: candy, energy drinks, soft drinks and sweetened beverages. Montana’s names high-sugar beverages, energy drinks, candy and prepared desserts. Virginia’s names sweetened beverages. A household’s comment would be about its own state’s list, which is why the four notices have to be read one at a time.
The docket that pushed Ohio’s start back
Ohio had planned to begin on October 1. According to 13abc in Toledo, the Food and Nutrition Administration asked Ohio to delay so USDA could issue a Federal Register notice and assess public comments before the project begins, and the state paused the start “until receiving further guidance.” No new Ohio date was given. The Ohio notice itself still prints October 1 as its effective date, a line the delay has overtaken.
USDA’s waiver table, updated September 25, now lists November 1 as the target implementation date for Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia. The wording matters, because the table is USDA’s listing and the sources read here include no state-agency confirmation of the date. The comment window closes October 15, about two weeks before that target.
What a comment can be expected to do
The notices say little about how comments will be weighed. The Ohio notice says the agency “will carefully review the results of the project based on the State’s evaluation data,” which is a commitment about reviewing the state’s evaluation, not a promise to change a project because of public comments. No notice read for this article states how many comments are needed or whether a project can be stopped by them.
What the notices do establish is a dated, public route. Ohio’s names regulations.gov and an email inbox, and the deadline is fixed in the Federal Register text. A household that wants the agency to hear how a restriction would change a monthly shopping trip, such as which store it uses or whether fountain drinks are part of a gas-station stop, has two named channels and one date to use them. Because the notices ran on September 15, the window is 30 days long, and by October 1 more than half of it has passed, leaving 14 days.
The controlling text for every date in this article is the notice itself, found by its Federal Register document number: 2026-18897 for Ohio, 2026-18896 for South Carolina and 2026-18892 for Montana. The Federal Register entries, not secondhand summaries, decide whether a comment arrived on time.
Keeping SNAP paperwork steady while purchase rules change
The comment notices concern what a SNAP card can buy in four states. They say nothing about recertification, and a household’s renewal and reporting dates keep running on the state’s schedule whatever happens to the restriction projects.
The SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer holds a 13-page organizer with a renewal document checklist, plus 51 state packs, for keeping those papers in order.
Sort a household’s SNAP renewal documents while the restriction rules settle →
AI assistance went into drafting this article, and its dates and docket numbers were checked against the Federal Register and USDA pages linked above.
