Bracket Bills: Circumventing the Texas Constitution?

The Texas Constitution prohibits the Legislature from passing “local and special laws” in most circumstances.¹ Yet the modern Texas legislative process produces dozens of laws each session that apply to only one city, one county, or one district. The tool that makes this possible is the bracket bill—a law that appears general in wording but is tailored so narrowly that it only applies to a single jurisdiction.

This article explores how bracket bills work, why they exist, and what they reveal about the uneasy relationship between constitutional formalism and legislative reality.

Constitutional Ban on ‘Local Laws’

Section 56 of Article III of the Texas Constitution expressly forbids the Legislature from passing local laws on a wide range of topics, including:

• “regulating the affairs of counties, cities, towns, wards or school districts.”
• “creating offices, or prescribing the powers and duties of officers, in counties, cities, towns, election or school districts.”
• “regulating the management of public schools.”
• “relieving or discharging any person or set of persons from the performance of any public duty or service imposed by general law.”
• “authorizing the laying out, opening, altering or maintaining of roads, highways, streets or alleys.”

These are categorical prohibitions that cannot be bypassed. Legislation on such matters is instead meant to be general—applicable statewide—or handled by local governments.

However, not all local legislation is categorically prohibited. While Article III, Section 56 forbids the Legislature from enacting local or special laws on a defined list of subjects, Article III, Section 57 provides a narrow procedural exception for other kinds of local bills. When a proposed law is not on the forbidden list, it may be enacted as a local measure—if the sponsor complies with the formal notice requirement: publication in the affected locality at least 30 days prior to introduction, stating the law’s substance, and presentation of that evidence to the Legislature.

This procedural mechanism was designed to preserve a limited pathway for justified, transparent local legislation. However, in practice, bracket bills have supplanted this process. By drafting laws that are formally general but functionally local, legislators routinely evade both the categorical prohibitions of Section 56 and the procedural safeguards of Section 57.

How Bracket Bills Work

Despite the plain language of Article III, Section 56, the Texas Legislature has found ways to enact local laws under the guise of general ones. The most common method is the bracket bill. Rather than naming a city or county outright, a bracket bill applies to a class defined by objective criteria—typically population size, geography, or historical facts.

For example, a law might apply to “a county with a population of more than 3.3 million” (which only Harris County qualifies for), or “a municipality incorporated before 1950 that borders a river and has a population over 1.5 million” (read: the City of Houston). In form, these bills apply to a broad class. In function, they target a single jurisdiction.

Because Texas courts have interpreted Article III, Section 56 to require only facial generality, bracket bills are presumed constitutional so long as they are written in terms that could theoretically apply to more than one entity. It does not matter that only one city or county fits the bracket now—as long as another could fit in the future, the law may stand.

Origins of the Constitutional Ban

The practice of limiting special legislation in Texas has deep roots. In the 19th century, state legislatures were flooded with private bills for divorces, name changes, ferry charters, city incorporations, and other favors. These bills were time-consuming, often partisan, and ripe for corruption.

Under Texas’ 1869 Constitution—written during military rule and backed by federal authority—the state government expanded its control over local affairs, and the Legislature continued the practice of passing special and local laws with little restraint. Many of these laws favored political allies, corporate interests, or particular counties. Cronyism was seen as pervasive, and ordinary citizens had little recourse when legislative favors were distributed through closed-door dealings.

The experience reinforced the public’s distrust of centralized authority and deepened the appetite for structural reform. By the mid-1870s, reformers in Texas and other states sought to rein in this chaos by mandating general laws that would apply uniformly across jurisdictions.

The Texas Constitution of 1876 responded with one of the strongest bans on special legislation in the country.² Article III, Section 56 contains a long and detailed list of topics on which the Legislature is forbidden to pass “local or special” laws. This language was not symbolic. It was intended to cut off the Legislature’s ability to pass narrowly tailored legislation benefitting specific places or people. The goal was to enforce uniformity, reduce corruption, and keep lawmakers focused on issues of statewide significance.

Why Bracket Bills Are Passed Today

The motivations behind bracket bills are varied. Some reflect old-fashioned favoritism or cronyism—targeted favors granted to a particular industry or constituency in a locality. Others reflect genuine differences in local governance needs, especially in a large and diverse state like Texas. But bracket bills are also frequently used as a tool of legislative compromise.

When lawmakers from opposing parties cannot agree on a policy’s statewide application, they may strike a deal to limit its reach to jurisdictions where there is political consensus. For example, a bill affecting law enforcement oversight or school operations may be limited to large urban counties with Democratic leadership, leaving rural and suburban Republican-controlled counties unaffected. This allows legislation to pass without imposing its terms on areas that strongly oppose it.

Such compromises may be politically necessary, but they come at a cost. They bake partisan divides into the code and reinforce unequal treatment of jurisdictions under state law. They also shift the Legislature away from crafting durable statewide policy and toward narrowly sliced accommodations designed to secure passage rather than coherence.

The Courts Weigh In

Texas courts have repeatedly upheld bracket bills, emphasizing that legislative classifications based on population or geography are permissible if they are not arbitrary. In a 1996 ruling,³ the Texas Supreme Court held that a law applying to a specific type of municipal utility district, defined by location and date of creation, was valid because it left open the theoretical possibility that other districts could eventually qualify.

The key distinction in the court’s eyes is between a “closed class” and an “open class.” A closed class names or clearly limits the subject to a specific entity; an open class uses objective criteria that, while narrow, could apply to others over time. This doctrine has allowed the Legislature broad discretion to draft bracketed legislation, even when the practical impact is local.

Critics argue that this legal reasoning invites circumvention. A law that only applies to Dallas County—but is written as “a county with a population between 2.5 million and 2.7 million, bordering two other counties of at least 800,000 residents”—may satisfy the formal test but not the constitutional spirit. Yet courts remain reluctant to second-guess legislative judgment on what constitutes a general law.

Real-World Examples of Bracket Bills

1. Transportation Code § 452.701: Applies only to cities with over 1.9 million residents that have certain transit authorities—a bracket that includes only Houston.
2. Local Government Code § 143.013: Establishes civil service rules for fire and police chiefs in municipalities with populations over 1.5 million—again, just Houston.
3. Health and Safety Code § 534.035: Applies to mental health authorities in counties with populations between 3.3 million and 3.5 million—targeting Harris County.
4. Education Code § 11.174: Allows certain partnership models in districts with more than 190,000 students—a bracket built for Houston ISD.
5. Government Code § 27.031(b)(2): Adjusts justice of the peace court jurisdiction in counties with more than 3.3 million people.
6. Utilities Code § 13.002(25): Defines a “municipally owned utility” to include only certain large cities with specific population and infrastructure characteristics.
7. Water Code § 49.1811: Applies only to water districts created before a specific date in a county with over 2 million residents.
8. Government Code § 25.0006(a-1): Establishes court rules in counties that “border Oklahoma” and have a population between specific thresholds—targeting border counties like Cooke or Grayson.
9. Health and Safety Code § 365.0341: Applies to counties “along the Gulf Coast” that meet specific floodplain or hurricane-risk characteristics.
10. Local Government Code § 381.004(f): Authorizes specific economic development practices in counties that “contain a portion of a national forest” and have under 100,000 people—targeting a subset of East Texas counties.
11. Tax Code § 11.1825: Provides property tax exemptions to certain nonprofit housing organizations operating in cities with over 1.8 million people—targeting Houston’s use of Housing Finance Corporations (HFCs).
12. Property Tax Code § 11.20(c): Grants tax exemptions for charitable organizations, but includes qualifying language based on population or geographic characteristics—effectively applying only to selected institutions in specific counties.

These are just a sample. The Texas code is filled with bracketed provisions that target cities, counties, school districts, and regional authorities with surgical precision. Often, their specificity is known only to those who drafted them.

A Bloated and Opaque State Code

One of the consequences of bracket bills is the growing complexity and opacity of Texas statutory law. Laws that apply to a single jurisdiction must be cloaked in generalized language, making them difficult to interpret without insider knowledge. A policymaker, journalist, or resident may read a statute and find it nearly impossible to discern which jurisdictions it affects without consulting legislative history or population data.

This lack of transparency undermines accountability. When laws are drafted to appear general but are in fact narrowly tailored, the public is deprived of a clear understanding of who benefits and who is targeted. It also makes it harder for legal professionals and government staff to apply the law consistently.

Moreover, bracketed laws accumulate. As population thresholds shift, old brackets remain in the code while new ones are layered on top. The result is a dense, fragmented body of statutory law that requires decryption. What began as a workaround becomes a long-term burden on clarity and governance.

The 2001 Constitutional Amendment

In 2001, voters approved a constitutional amendment to Article III, Section 56 that added two limited exceptions.⁴ Subsection (b) now allows the Legislature to pass special laws: (1) for the preservation of game and fish in specific localities, and (2) for fence laws applicable to any subdivision or county as needed.

These exceptions reflect the need to address legitimate regional differences. But they also underscore a deeper contradiction: lawmakers are reluctant to propose broader amendments to the constitutional ban—perhaps unwilling to be seen openly endorsing the kind of favoritism the provision was designed to prevent. Instead, they continue to rely on bracket bills to quietly achieve outcomes that would be politically risky to authorize in plain terms. The result is a system that honors the form of constitutional restraint while routinely bypassing its substance.

Conclusion: Too Risky to Amend, Too Easy to Evade

Bracket bills represent a legal sleight of hand—compliant with the letter of the Texas Constitution but evasive of its purpose. What began as a safeguard against corruption and local favoritism has been slowly unraveled by clever legislative drafting and judicial tolerance.

Far from promoting uniformity, bracket bills allow lawmakers to create tailored exceptions, privileges, or burdens that apply unequally across jurisdictions. They reward those with access and influence, and they do so in ways that are hard to detect without careful analysis. In a state that prides itself on constitutional fidelity, the widespread use of bracket bills raises a fundamental question: should the law be general in name only, or general in substance?

If local legislation is necessary, the honest solution is open constitutional reform—not obfuscation. Until then, bracket bills will continue to stretch the boundaries of what it means to follow the Constitution, while quietly granting carveouts and favors that the public can barely trace.

Sources and Citations

1. Texas Constitution Article III, § 56 ↩︎
2. See George D. Braden, The Constitution of the State of Texas: An Annotated and Comparative Analysis, vol. 1 (Texas Legislative Council, 1977), pp. 159–160. ↩︎
3. Maple Run MUD v. Monaghan, 931 S.W.2d 941 (Tex. 1996) ↩︎
4. Tex. H.J.R. No. 47, 77th Leg., R.S. (2001), approved by voters Nov. 6, 2001. The ballot proposition stated, “The constitutional amendment to authorize the legislature to enact laws regarding the conservation and preservation of wildlife and the regulation of fencing in certain areas.” ↩︎