Capitol Context: Bill passage rates in the single digits for special sessions
With the elections behind us, we’re shifting from providing you context from the campaign trail to context from the Texas State Capitol as the Texas legislature gets to work. Keep up with Capitol Context this legislative session as we examine bills being debated, the messages we’re hearing from elected leaders and how their votes impact us all.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — With the second special session of the 89th Texas legislature behind us, we were curious to see what percentage of the 378 bills filed by lawmakers passed.
After digging into online data from the Texas Legislature’s website, we found 11 bills over the most recent 21-day special session passed. That’s 5.5% of the total bills filed that passed, though we should note KXAN only examined House and Senate bills, not other legislation such as resolutions.
That low percentage of bills passed isn’t unusual for a special session. We looked at the percentage of bills passed during special sessions over the past ten years in the Texas legislature, and, according to the Legislative Reference Library of Texas, in no other special session did lawmakers pass more than 5.5% percent of the bills filed.
In several sessions, lawmakers passed zero bills — including the first special session of this year. That session, which started July 21, 2025, came to a halt when Democrats broke quorum in response to a Republican-lead push to re-draw the state’s congressional map.
Two other special sessions over the past decade saw zero bills passed. The first special session in 2021 was halted by a quorum break over bills related to voting restrictions, and the first special session in 2023 also ended with nothing passed as Republican lawmakers found themselves deadlocked over how to proceed with property tax relief.
When it comes to regular sessions — we found a much higher rate of bill passage.
Regular sessions are typically much longer than a special session — 140 days for a regular session versus up to 30 days for a special session — but regular sessions also see significantly more bills filed.
In this year’s 89th regular session, just under 14% of the 8,719 bills lawmakers filed passed. That’s less than the average percentage of bills passed during regular sessions in the past decade. An average of 17% of bills have passed during regular sessions since 2015.
The next regular session is scheduled to start January 12, 2027.
