Texas rewrites the rules for donated bodies, down to who signs for them

The Texas Funeral Service Commission votes Friday on a wholesale rewrite of the rules governing donated human bodies — a signed chain-of-custody form at every handoff, permission required before a body leaves the state, and a flat ban on selling tickets to watch remains dissected. The notices set a thirty-day comment period from July 10 and list August 9 as the earliest date the commission could adopt them — five days before Friday’s meeting.

The commission has this job because the Legislature gave it away from someone else. Until 2023 the Anatomical Board of the State of Texas — one professor from each Texas medical, dental, osteopathic and chiropractic school — oversaw willed-body programs and the companies that supply cadavers to researchers and device makers. A 2023 law abolished that board, moved its duties to the state’s funeral regulator and set up an advisory committee in its place. A year later, NBC News reported that the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth had used and leased out the bodies of people whose relatives were reachable and never told. The center suspended its program. A 2025 bill tightening the law further passed the Senate 30-0 and died on the House calendar.

So the commission is doing it by rule. The eighteen items up Friday would require a unique identifier for every body and every part taken from it, signatures from both sides at each transfer, records kept seven years and produced to the commission or a prosecutor within two business days. A body could be imported into Texas only after written notice, and shipped out only with the commission’s written permission. Dissection would be limited to inspected settings closed to the general public, under a qualified instructor, and no one could charge the public admission to watch.

Three more rules go out for comment the same day: screening donors for hepatitis and HIV before a body is used unembalmed, registering the private couriers who move remains, and tracking plastinates — bodies preserved in curable plastic, the technique behind traveling anatomy exhibits. The commission says nothing now requires those specimens to be registered or accounted for when a school is done with them.

The commission also takes up three legal matters, any of which it may close to the public. One is a federal suit by a Plano mosque against the commission and its former presiding officer, Kristin Tips, over an order telling the mosque to stop arranging Islamic burial rites; a judge in Austin let the case proceed in June, rejecting Tips’s claim of immunity. Public comment runs two minutes a person.

Meeting at a glance

Commission members

• Eric Opiela, Austin — presiding officer; attorney and public member.
• Jonathan Scepanski — assistant presiding officer; chief operating officer, Apex Primary Care.
• Larry Allen — retired Mesquite police lieutenant; chairs the city’s planning commission.
• Timothy “Tim” Brown, Mission — funeral director, Ric Brown Family Funeral Home.
• Salvador “Sal” Perches Jr., El Paso — chief executive, Perches Funeral Group.
• Ivan Andarza, Austin — attorney and public member.
• Jay Carnes, Texas City — owner, Carnes Funeral Home.

The roster is from the commission’s own board members page, which does not list a city for every member. Occupations Code §651.051 sets the seven seats: two licensed as both embalmer and funeral director, one crematory owner or operator, and four public members. Under §651.057 the governor names the presiding officer and the members elect the assistant presiding officer from among the public members; §651.054 sets staggered six-year terms. Kristin Tips, who was presiding officer by mid-2024, is no longer a commissioner. Staff contact: (512) 936-2474.