Texas Legislature 101: How bills become laws — and how you can participate in the process

The Texas Legislature is made up of the House of Representatives, which has 150 members and is known as the lower chamber, and the Senate, which has 31 members and is known as the upper chamber. Each representative and senator represents a geographic district. These political districts were redrawn in 2021. Find your districts here and your lawmakers here.

After the 2024 elections, Republicans hold 88 of the 150 seats in the House and 20 of the 31 seats in the Senate. The House speaker presides over that chamber. The speaker is one of the 150 representatives in that chamber and is elected by a majority of members. The lieutenant governor presides over the Senate and is elected by Texas voters every four years.

Every odd-numbered year, the state Legislature gathers to pass a two-year state budget and other laws for 140 days beginning in January. This is known as a regular legislative session.

The governor can also call for lawmakers to convene for up to 30 days outside of regular sessions. During these so-called special sessions, lawmakers can pass laws only on issues outlined by the governor. In 2023, Gov. Greg Abbott called four special sessions to address property taxes, immigration and border enforcement and school vouchers, among other things. The Texas Senate also convened September 2023 for Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial. (The Senate acquitted Paxton of charges brought by the Texas House.)

Bill filing

Lawmakers have been filing bills since Nov. 12. In general, lawmakers can continue filing any bills during the first 60 calendar days of the legislative session. After that point, only bills related to local matters or emergency items and appropriations can be filed, unless four-fifths of lawmakers are present in a chamber vote to suspend the rule.

While thousands of bills are filed — more than 8,000 bills were filed in the last regular session — only around a thousand will pass.

“The system is designed to kill legislation, not pass legislation,” said Kathy Green, the director of state and federal strategy for AARP Texas who has more than 30 years of experience working in the Legislature, in state agencies and with interest groups.

Committees

First, a bill must be referred to a committee in the chamber where it was introduced. The House speaker assigns bills to committees in that chamber and the lieutenant governor assigns legislation to Senate committees. The committee chair then decides which legislation will be considered when the panel meets.

If a committee takes up a bill, an open hearing allowing for public testimony is held. The committee can then choose to report, or advance, a bill to the rest of the chamber or to not take action on the legislation.

Most bills are referred to a committee, but many are never considered or are left pending in a committee, according to the state’s handbook on the legislative process.

“Step No. 1 in advocacy is to lobby to get the bill scheduled for a hearing and not to overlook that important step,” said state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, who has served in the Texas Senate since 1987 and holds the record for passing the most bills.

To get a bill a hearing, Zaffirini said people should work with the staff of lawmakers who are the authors or sponsors of a bill and the staff of the committee to which it was referred.

Floor debate

Once a bill passes a committee, it must be scheduled for debate by the full chamber before it can continue advancing.

After debate on a bill, the majority of lawmakers in a chamber has to approve the bill twice in order for it to pass. While the Senate usually takes both votes on the same day, the House normally doesn’t.

Chambers must agree

After a bill is passed in the chamber it originated in, it is referred to the other chamber, where the bill must go through the same process. And if it is passed, the two chambers must agree on any changes they made to the legislation before it is sent to the governor’s desk to be signed into law.

Further complicating this process: Lawmakers must meet certain deadlines to act on bills and move them forward. This means that one strategy to kill a bill before certain deadlines is to draw out debates on legislation or amendments.

“Amendments [are] really the way that you can get in under the hood of a piece of legislation, and really try to modify it for the better [or] try to modify it for the worst if you’re trying to defeat it [by] creat[ing] like a poison pill in the legislation,” said Alex Birnel, advocacy director for MOVE Texas, an organization that focuses on voting rights, climate and criminal justice reform.

A poison pill would be an amendment that changes a bill’s intent, makes it ineffective or less palatable for lawmakers to pass.

Amendments can also be used to revive provisions from other bills. Lawmakers can also use what’s called a point of order — or POO — to challenge and derail bills if a rule wasn’t followed. The minority party often uses this tactic to kill a bill when they lack the votes to defeat it.

Resolutions, such as joint resolutions calling to put an amendment to the Texas Constitution on the ballot for voters, follow slightly different legislative processes. You can read more details about resolutions and the lawmaking process in the state’s handbook.

The state budget is also a piece of legislation and moves through the Legislature in a similar process as other bills. It is developed through a two-year process that is led by the Legislative Budget Board, which is co-chaired by the speaker and lieutenant governor, and includes input from state agencies, the governor’s office and the comptroller. While lawmakers pass hundreds of new laws every legislative session, the budget bill — which pays for state agencies, public education, health care, roads and more — is the only piece of legislation lawmakers have to pass. You can read more about that process here.

The legislative session is run primarily by a handful of powerful figures in Texas politics: the governor, the lieutenant governor, the House speaker and the chairs of the Legislature’s committees.

Only the governor can call a special session, but their power is otherwise rather limited in the Texas Legislature.

The governor outlines emergency items, or priorities. During the first 60 calendar days of a legislative session, lawmakers can pass only legislation related to the governor’s emergency items.

The governor can also sign or veto bills, including line items in the state budget passed by lawmakers. Lawmakers can override a veto with two-thirds votes from the members present in each chamber, but they rarely do, Green said.

“That's where a lot of his power comes in,” she said. “He has that ability to decide whether that bill actually becomes law or not.”

If a governor takes no action on a bill, it still becomes law. The governor may leave a bill unsigned as a symbolic act or to distance themselves from the legislation, said Sherri Greenberg, a dean for state and local government engagement at the University of Texas at Austin and a former Democratic state representative.

It’s the lieutenant governor, the second-highest statewide elected official in the state, who is regarded as the most powerful person in the Texas Legislature, Green said, because they oversee the Texas Senate. In addition to referring bills to committees, the lieutenant governor has wide discretion over who to name to a committee. They also decide ties and procedural questions.

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has held the office since 2015, has also gained power in the Senate by lowering the threshold of votes needed to bypass a Senate tradition and bring a bill to the floor for debate. Historically, the Senate has placed a “blocker bill” at the top of its daily agenda, preventing the Senate from passing any other bills unless two-thirds of senators agreed to “suspend the regular order of business” and skip over the blocker bill.

The tradition lends influence to the minority party by requiring bipartisanship to advance a bill, but Patrick has swayed senators to vote to lower that threshold during his tenure. Essentially, this means Republicans in the Senate can advance a bill without the support of a single Democrat.

The speaker of the House plays a similar role as the lieutenant governor but must be elected by their colleagues. Still, the speaker in the Texas Legislature usually holds more power than the speaker in the U.S. House of Representatives because state representatives tend to follow the speaker’s lead, said Brendan Steinhauser, a political strategist who has done legislative or political work since 2002 and has worked with conservative groups such as the Young Americans for Liberty.

“People realize how much power the speaker has in terms of their bills getting killed,” he said.

This year, the election for the speaker of the House has become contentious with two Republicans – state Rep. David Cook of Mansfield and state Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock – vying for the role.

Republican state Rep. Dade Phelan of Beaumont, who had served as speaker of the House since in 2021 and oversaw Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment, dropped out of this year’s election for House speaker after facing criticism from top Republicans.

The chairs of some committees are also particularly influential. For example, the House Calendars Committee, as well as the Senate Administration Committee, House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Finance Committee can play key roles in whether bills are heard on the floor of the chamber or are funded.

“So it’s a matter of not only lobbying the committee that is considering the bill and the members who will vote for the bill, but also the members of the finance committee and the members who will vote for the budget because funding is critical,” Zaffirini said.

Each chamber’s State Affairs Committee is also powerful because it has broad jurisdiction to receive bills on almost any topic.

Historically, the speaker of the House has appointed committee chairs from both parties, but some Republicans and conservative groups have pushed back against that practice in recent years.

The first three months of the legislative session are usually slow. After lawmakers gavel in, new members will be sworn in, a speaker of the House will be elected and each chamber will adopt its rules.

Usually by late January, the speaker of the House and the lieutenant governor will name lawmakers to committees, which will begin holding hearings for bills, Green said. And in early February, the governor usually outlines his emergency items during his State of the State speech.

This is a good time to make your voice heard by contacting your lawmakers’ offices or participating in public testimony, according to longtime advocates.

In April and May, the pace quickens as lawmakers rush to meet deadlines. During this time, the work days at the Capitol get longer, and lawmakers may work through the weekends to negotiate and pass legislation.

Here are some key dates for the upcoming session:

• Jan. 14 is the first day of the legislative session.
• March 14 is the 60th day and the deadline to file most bills.
• June 2 is sine die, or the last day of the legislative session.
• June 22 is the last day the governor can sign or veto bills.
• Sept. 1 is the earliest day most bills can go into effect, if they didn’t pass with more than two-thirds of support from each chamber.

The Texas Legislature Online: Through the Legislature’s website, you can find the bills that have been filed in this legislative session or in past sessions and see their progress. You can create a personal list of bills to easily view and set up email alerts for updates on legislation. And you can get email alerts for when notices of a committee hearing are posted. You can also use the website to find links to broadcasts of floor or committee meetings in the House and Senate and other resources, such as a glossary of legislative terms. (We may also sometimes stream committee hearings on pages for specific stories.)

The Bill Status Hotline: During the legislative session, you can call 877-824-7038 in Texas to get “up-to-the-minute” information about a bill’s status, the legislative process, help getting a copy of the bill and contact information for a lawmaker’s office, according to the Legislative Reference Library. But hotline staff cannot interpret a bill or transfer your call to a lawmaker’s office. The Legislative Reference Library also has an FAQ on the Legislature and other resources, including a daily collection of news stories related to the state Legislature.

The Texas Tribune: You can also keep up with critical news of the Legislature through the Texas Tribune’s coverage. Here are some of the ways you can follow our work:

Subscribe to our newsletters. For summaries of the most important Texas news from us and other news outlets, you can sign up for The Brief, our free daily newsletter, or for The Briefly Weekly. You can also sign up for breaking news alerts or weekly RSS newsletters compiling all our stories on topics such as the Texas Legislature, education and health care.

Follow our free WhatsApp channel, where we’ll be sending updates at least once a week with essential news about the Texas Legislature. Find and follow us through this link. Tap the bell icon in the channel to turn on notifications and not miss updates.

Listen to our weekly podcast, TribCast, where Editor-in-Chief Matthew Watkins, reporters Eleanor Klibanoff and James Barragan and other guests will discuss the latest news from the 2025 legislative session. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts and on our YouTube channel.

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Even though most legislation dies and one party currently holds control of the Legislature, political strategists, advocates and lawmakers all say addressing issues is still possible in the Legislature.

“The Legislature teaches you that strange things happen,” said Birnel of MOVE Texas. “In part because of the volume of bills and the short amount of time they all have to make it through, a lot of legislation dies, even things that are priorities, so to speak, of the majority party, and good amendments make it through.”

For example, Texans can now track their mail-in ballots online thanks to a bill passed in 2021, even amid dissent among lawmakers on other voting legislation, Birnel said.

Often, passing legislation requires determination.

“Persistence is the name of the game,'' Zaffirini said, pointing to the 2017 passage of legislation she championed that banned texting while driving in the state. While the House bill passed in 2017, Zaffirini first filed legislation on the policy in 2009. “Times change, people change, situations change. When I first filed my anti-texting bill, I couldn’t even get a hearing, and finally I passed it in the Senate.”

Once a bill passes, it can become easier to pass other related bills and create more change, said Luke Metzger, the executive director of the advocacy group Environment Texas.

“It’s easy to get frustrated and then just cynical about the process,” he said. “What’s kept me going for 20-plus years of working on this has just been working for that incremental progress because that makes a difference. Even small changes can have meaningful impacts on people’s lives.”

Contact your lawmakers: You don’t have to be an expert to meet or talk with a legislator’s office. Everyday Texans can also share their concerns and personal stories, which can be the most effective advocacy, Green said.

“If you’ve got stories about those actual things that affect your daily life, talk to your legislator about that,” she said. “They need to hear the stories; they need to understand what people back in their districts are facing.”

But it helps to be prepared with knowledge of the legislation, including its impact and possible costs, and about the lawmaker you’re contacting, Zaffirini said. For example, don’t lobby a legislator to support a bill if they’ve authored it or if the legislation has already passed in their chamber, she said.

The sooner you contact your lawmakers’ offices, the more likely you’re able to meet with someone and build relationships that can help later in the process. Meeting with the staff of a lawmaker can be just as important or more important than meeting with a legislator.

“Staff is very important in the process because staff makes the recommendations regarding the bill,” Zaffirini said. “So by working with a staff, [voters] prepare the staff to be persuasive with a member.”

You can also email lawmakers’ offices, which typically include staff members dedicated to reading through correspondence, said Shera Eichler, a government affairs consultant and former chief of staff for a state representative.

Testify at a public hearing: You can register through kiosks at the Capitol or online while using the Capitol Wi-Fi. In the Senate, you may have to fill out a card in person during the hearing to testify. You can find more tips on how to testify here.

It is more impactful to succinctly speak about your experience than it is to read written testimony or just cite facts, Metzger said. But you can also submit written testimony or have someone else testify on your behalf.

It can take time for legislation to come up for discussion in a committee hearing, especially if a hearing is scheduled for after a chamber meets for floor debate, so it helps to be prepared to be at the Capitol for a while or to ask the staff of a bill’s author or a committee when the legislation could be heard.

“Planning is critical, and typically plan to spend the day and stay overnight if necessary,” Zaffirini said. It can also help to communicate with staff if you need to leave by a certain time, she said.

Join an advocacy group: If you find an organization that is working on issues that matter to you, they can help you navigate and stay engaged in the legislative process, Birnel said. For example, Birnel said MOVE Texas plans to bring young people to the Capitol for lobby days. Organizations can also share your insights and concerns when they work with lawmakers to craft or advocate for legislation and amendments.

But it doesn’t take a well-funded organization, Eichler said.

“Maybe there's a group of parents or a group of your neighbors that share the same common concerns, where you can all meet with the legislator together or send a letter together,” she said.

Raise awareness in your community: Even if you can’t make it to the Capitol, contacting your lawmaker or raising awareness in your community could also help move the needle on an issue, Metzger said.

“Often, what you do in the district is far more important than what happens in the building because the legislators ultimately respond to their constituents and have to represent the constituents,” he said.

You can also write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper or talk to the news media. And these days, you can easily share your story on social media and tag lawmakers, Birnel said.