State Rep. Marti Deuter's bill giving Illinois the power to update its newborn disease screening list without federal guidance is now law.

Gov. JB Pritzker signed Senate Bill 3049 during the week of Aug. 18, according to an announcement from Deuter's office on Aug. 31. The law gives a renamed Universal Newborn Screening Advisory Committee the authority to review medical conditions that have FDA-authorized treatments and recommend adding them to the state's screening panel.

The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) will keep final say over which conditions are added.

The vote was unanimous.

SB 3049 passed both the House and Senate without opposition. Deuter, a Democrat representing Elmhurst's District 45, served as the primary House sponsor. Sen. Julie Morrison introduced the bill in the Senate.

The bill addresses a gap created when the federal advisory body that traditionally evaluated new newborn screening conditions was disbanded. More than a quarter of the country's healthcare-related federal advisory committees had been shut down as of March, according to the advocacy group Public Citizen, as reported by NPR on Aug. 29. With that federal guidance gone, states now bear more responsibility for keeping their screening lists current.

"Earlier detection means earlier treatment, and the sooner we can give families a more complete assessment of their kids' overall health, the better," Deuter said in a statement announcing the signing.

Deuter, who served on the Elmhurst City Council from 2013 through 2024 before winning her House seat, called the screening program critical for catching serious but treatable conditions early in a newborn's life.

Illinois has screened newborns since 1965, when testing began for PKU (phenylketonuria), a metabolic disorder, according to IDPH. The program now checks for more than 50 conditions. Roughly 100,000 newborns are tested each year statewide, and about 500 babies are diagnosed annually through the screenings.

The law does not change which conditions are screened for now. It creates a process for the state to add new ones as treatments become available, without waiting for federal direction that may no longer come.