Who sets the agenda for special session in Texas?

By Kate Goodrich & Denise Rose

Today, Texas legislators will reconvene for a special session to address the 11 agenda items recently issued by Governor Abbott. This article summarizes the items up for discussion during the session, including two emergency items on bail reform and election integrity that did not reach the governor’s desk during the regular session.

The Texas Constitution limits special sessions to a maximum of 30 days but imposes no minimum. Only legislative items that the governor puts on the agenda can be discussed during a special session, however, he can add additional items on to the call as the special session goes on. If the governor is not satisfied with the outcome of this special session, or if he wants lawmakers to focus on additional topics, he may call as many additional sessions as he wants.

This is the first of at least two expected special sessions this year, with a fall special session likely coming to address redistricting and the spending of billions of dollars of federal COVID-19 relief funds. The Texas Constitution does not limit the number of special sessions a governor may call in between two regular legislative sessions.

Related Insights: Overview of 87th Texas Legislature: Key Bills, the State Budget, and Jackson Walker’s Role »

Revisiting Emergency Items That Didn’t Pass

At the outset of the regular session, Abbott declared five emergency items that focused on bail reform, election integrity, COVID liability protections, broadband, and local defunding of police. He later added ERCOT and PUC reform following Winter Storm Uri. On the last day the House could pass Senate bills, Democrats walked out of the House chamber, breaking quorum and effectively blocking the election integrity bill. During the special session, Texas lawmakers will revisit that item as well as the Governor’s emergency item on bail reform.

• Bail Reform (House Bill 20): Relating to rules for fixing the amount of bail, to the release of certain defendants on a bail bond or personal bond, to related duties of certain officers taking bail bonds and of a magistrate in a criminal case, to charitable bail organizations, and to the reporting of information pertaining to bail bonds.
• Election Integrity (Senate Bill 7): Relating to election integrity and security, including by preventing fraud in the conduct of elections in this state; increasing criminal penalties; creating criminal offenses.

Other Items to Be Considered

In addition to addressing the Governor’s emergency items on bail reform and election integrity, Texas legislators will discuss legislation that would potentially:

• provide funding related to Texas’ border security plan;
• prohibit social media companies from blocking, banning, demonetizing, or otherwise taking action against a user based on the user’s expressed viewpoints;
• restore or revoke Article X of the General Appropriations Act;
• address the education provided to middle- and high-school students in public schools about dating violence, domestic violence, and child abuse, and also allow parents to opt their children out of the instruction;
• mandate that student athletes participating in University Interscholastic League (UIL) athletic competitions compete based on their sex assigned at birth;
• prohibit abortion-inducing drugs from being sent by mail or delivery service and amend the laws applicable to the reporting of abortions and abortion complications;
• provide a “thirteenth check” or one-time supplemental payment of benefits under the Teacher Retirement System of Texas;
• revise the public school social studies curriculum to prohibit teaching critical race theory; and
• provide appropriations from additional available general revenue for:
  • property tax relief,
  • enhancing protection for the safety of children in Texas’ foster-care system by attracting and retaining private providers for the system, and
  • protecting the state from potential cybersecurity threats.

More to Come

Stay tuned for updates from Jackson Walker as Texas legislators convene for the special session. For questions about how you or your business could potentially be impacted, please contact a Jackson Walker attorney.

Texas Legislative Updates:

These materials are made available by Jackson Walker for informational purposes only, do not constitute legal advice, and are not a substitute for legal advice from qualified counsel. The laws of other states and nations may be entirely different from what is described. Your use of these materials does not create an attorney-client relationship between you and Jackson Walker. The facts and results of each case will vary, and no particular result can be guaranteed.

If you’re following the voting rights news of the week, you’ve probably seen that the Texas Legislature convened for a special session on Thursday. Even though the state’s legislative year has ended, representatives in the state House are now going back to work for previously unscheduled days in order to pass legislation deemed high priority by the governor. Special sessions can mean the difference between bills passing or dying — and the circumstances under which they are called can spell the difference between protecting  or restricting voting rights. Today, we’ll explain what exactly a special session is and why they matter in the legislative process. 

What are special sessions?

The legislative calendar differs significantly from state to state, but most share a common structure. A legislature has a set number of days in a “session,” during which they can propose, debate and pass bills to send to the governor. If a bill does not pass before the end of the session, it will have to wait until the following year to be reintroduced. 

Most regular legislative sessions end before the summer, meaning that legislators stop work for the year around the same time that schools let out. As you might imagine, however, there can be a fair number of government priorities that legislatures don’t get around to tackling in just a few months of work — and if specific additional legislation still needs to be considered, the state government can convene for a special session.

Who can call a special session?

In 36 states, either the legislature or governor can call a special session. These sessions can take place whenever, but for the most part they are limited in their scope — the legislature may only debate the specific legislative priorities outlined when the special session was called. For these 36 states, this agenda can be set by either the governor or the legislature — meaning that if there is a divided government, branches controlled by either party can call their colleagues back to work in order to tackle pending legislation. In Hawaii right now, for example, the Hawaii Legislature has reconvened for a special session to override some of the governor’s vetoes. When either arm of government can call a special session, they both have a chance to pass priorities that were left off the table during the regular session — but in many states in the United States, this balance of power doesn’t exist. 

In the other 14 states, only the governor can call special sessions, giving the executive and the party that they represent an outsized influence on the legislative calendar. Governors can use this to their advantage, holding legislatures hostage to their own agenda and forcing them to return to work if the governor’s preferred bills are not passed during the regular session. While this has obvious disadvantages for the party that doesn’t hold the governorship, it can also lead to intra-party disagreements. In Texas earlier this year, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) tried to push for a special session after legislation he had championed failed in the state House. Gov. Greg Abbott (R), however, was not similarly motivated to see these bills advance at the time. In response to Patrick’s efforts, Abbott made clear the power that governors in these 14 states have over the special session process: “Not only am I the only one with the authority to call a special session, I get to decide when, and I get to decide what will be on that special session. And here’s what I would do if anybody tries to force this,” Abbott said. “The only thing I will put on there are things that I want passed.” 

What do this year’s special sessions mean for voting rights? 

Currently, there are five states in special sessions right now, and many are still wrapping up their regular sessions. Each state is tackling a different agenda, but we’re keeping our eyes on Texas. When calling the session, Abbott released the legislative agenda for the Texas Legislature — a list that included elections legislation, which is a high priority for the governor after Democrats walked out of the chamber in May and denied Republicans the quorum they needed to pass their omnibus voter suppression bill, Senate Bill 7. The new bill that Republicans hope to pass during the special session, House Bill 3, includes many provisions previously considered in the regular session of the Legislature, including criminalizing the proactive distribution of mail-in ballot applications, banning 24-hour and drive-thru voting and adding ID requirements to vote by mail. Although the bill number may be different, the special session allows Republicans another shot at the same suppression efforts they were prevented from passing in the spring. 

As lawsuits continue against voter suppression laws passed in the spring and Congress looks towards their impending recess, it’s vital to remember that Republican efforts to suppress the vote are still ongoing — and we must keep up the fight to protect voting rights no matter what. 

Keep up with updates coming out of the special session in Texas on our page dedicated to breaking news alerts.