This week opened the gates for lawmakers to file bills for the 2025 legislation session, which starts in January.
By Tuesday, lawmakers had filed over 1,500 bills, and those will continue to flow in until the March 14 deadline. Many more bills are filed than pass both chambers — last session only about 15% of bills passed into law.
Bills have already been filed related to the state’s abortion ban, border security, school funding and minimum wage.
Blaise Gainey, who covers state politics for The Texas Newsroom, said lawmakers often file bills early because they have had a lot of ideas during their time off.
“There might be some pent-up energy. Remember, they only meet once every other year. And so therefore, they probably have a lot of ideas of bills they want to get passed and they finish them and have them ready to go day one,” Gainey said. “Others may be more complicated, so they just may take some more time.”
Sherri Greenberg, a former Texas House rep who now teaches at the UT-Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, said lawmakers might also be seeking press attention for filling on day one.
“It may be that they want to show constituents and others that this is a high priority for them,” she said. “It may be that they think that they’re going to be heard earlier in the session, which is false.”
Gainey said that despite the enthusiasm, there really isn’t much of a chance most bills pass.
“Lawmakers only meet for 140 days every two years, meaning this year they’ll have from Jan. 14 to June 2 to pass legislation until they meet again in 2027,” he said. “So they’ll always file a lot of bills, but very few will make it over the finish line. For instance, last session, 8,000 bills were filed and only about 1,200 of those ended up being signed by Gov. Greg Abbott.”
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Greenberg said this is by design.
“The entire process is set up to kill bills, not to pass bills,” she said. “Visualize the Summer Olympics with people running the hurdles. And it’s just one hurdle after another to get over. That’s what it’s like trying to pass a bill.”
Gainey said House Speaker Dade Phelan reserved House Bills 1 through 150 for priority legislation and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick reserved Senate Bills 1 through 40 for the same reason.
Gainey said there are already trends emerging in terms of which issues will be high profile this session — chief among them Abbott’s renewed push to pass a school voucher plan.
“I think with President Trump coming into office, there will be a focus on the border and immigration. And that’s something that we’re seeing so far. This was a huge issue in the Legislature last year when Gov. Greg Abbott named securing the border an emergency item for lawmakers,” Gainey said.
“So far, bills have been filed that will allow the state to do rapid DNA tests on people that crossed the border and have been detained and are believed to possibly be lying about their familial ties, and another that has to do with building a wall.”
However, Gainey said the expected voucher bill has yet to be filed.
“There was one yesterday that was filed, but it was filed by somebody who voted ‘no’ on vouchers last year,” he said. “My guess is that’s probably not the bill people are waiting for and that they’ll be looking for something that gets filed in those early bill numbers because that’ll be what’s marked as priority legislation.”
