Texas Constitution:Article III

As amended November 6, 2001:

(a) The Legislature shall not, except as otherwise provided in this constitution, pass any local or special law, authorizing [sic]: (1) the creation, extension or impairing of liens; (2) regulating the affairs of counties, cities, towns, wards or school districts; (3) changing the names of persons or places; (4) changing the venue in civil or criminal cases; (5) authorizing the laying out, opening, altering or maintaining of roads, highways, streets or alleys; (6) relating to ferries or bridges, or incorporating ferry or bridge companies, except for the erection of bridges crossing streams which form boundaries between this and any other state; (7) vacating roads, town plats, streets or alleys; (8) relating to cemeteries, grave-yards or public grounds not of the State; (9) authorizing the adoption or legitimation of children; (10) locating or changing county seats; (11) incorporating cities, towns or villages, or changing their charters; (12) for the opening and conducting of elections, or fixing or changing the places of voting; (13) granting divorces; (14) creating offices, or prescribing the powers and duties of officers, in counties, cities, towns, election or school districts; (15) changing the law of descent or succession; (16) regulating the practice or jurisdiction of, or changing the rules of evidence in any judicial proceeding or inquiry before courts, justices of the peace, sheriffs, commissioners, arbitrators or other tribunals, or providing or changing methods for the collection of debts, or the enforcing of judgments, or prescribing the effect of judicial sales of real estate; (17) regulating the fees, or extending the powers and duties of aldermen, justices of the peace, magistrates or constables; (18) regulating the management of public schools, the building or repairing of school houses, and the raising of money for such purposes; (19) fixing the rate of interest; (20) affecting the estates of minors, or persons under disability; (21) remitting fines, penalties and forfeitures, and refunding moneys legally paid into the Treasury; (22) exempting property from taxation; (23) regulating labor, trade, mining and manufacturing; (24) declaring any named person of age; (25) extending the time for the assessment or collection of taxes, or otherwise relieving any assessor or collector of taxes from the due performance of his official duties, or his securities from liability; (26) giving effect to informal or invalid wills or deeds; (27) summoning or empanelling grand or petit juries; (28) for limitation of civil or criminal actions; (29) for incorporating railroads or other works of internal improvements; or (30) relieving or discharging any person or set of persons from the performance of any public duty or service imposed by general law.

(b) In addition to those laws described by Subsection (a) of this section in all other cases where a general law can be made applicable, no local or special law shall be enacted; provided, that nothing herein contained shall be construed to prohibit the Legislature from passing: (1) special laws for the preservation of the game and fish of this State in certain localities; and (2) fence laws applicable to any subdivision of this State or counties as may be needed to meet the wants of the people.

Editor Comments

This key section generally prohibits the enactment of so-called "special" or "local" laws.

The constitutions of about two-thirds of the states have one or more provisions addressing the subject. Some of the provisions are relatively short and some are rather lengthy. A side-by-side comparison reflects that this section, as adopted in 1876, was based in large part on a long-form provision (Art. IV, Sec. 53) contained in the Missouri Constitution of 1875, which read in part: "The General Assembly shall not pass any local or special law: Authorizing the creation, extension or impairing of liens; . . ."

This section has been amended once. The 2001 modification, part of a "constitutional cleanup amendment," transferred (1) the prohibition against local and special laws that relieve a person from any public duty or service imposed by general law from Section 43, Article XVI and (2) the authority to enact local fence laws from Section 22, Article XVI.

The primary types of local and/or special bills "otherwise" authorized by the constitution are bills: (1) creating or affecting a conservation and reclamation district (Section 59, Article XVI); (2) creating or affecting a hospital district (Sections 4 through 11, Article IX); (3) relating to the preservation of game and fish (Section 56(b)(1), Article III); (4) dealing with the courts system (Sections 1, 7, 8, and 21, Article V); (5) creating or affecting a road utility district or various water-related districts and similar special-purpose districts (Section 52, Article III); (6) granting aid or a release from the payment of taxes in cases of public calamity (Section 51, Article III; Section 10, Article VIII); (7) creating or relating to the operation of airport authorities (Section 12, Article IX); (8) providing for the consolidation of governmental offices and functions of political subdivisions comprising or located in a county (Section 64, Article III); (9) relating to fence laws (Section 56(b)(2), Article III); (10) relating to stock laws (Section 23, Article XVI); or (11) providing for local road maintenance (Section 9(e), Article VIII). Cf. Section 23 of Article XVI (" ... .")

Such provisions serve a variety of purposes. Two are: (1) preventing the Legislature from usurping local government control of public policy matters that are only of local importance; and (2) providing more time for the Legislature to address public policy matters of statewide importance.

What constitutes a local law or a special law, like much of the jurisprudence regarding this legislative restriction, is often unclear. Cf. Restrictions Upon Local and Special Legislation in State Constitutions 25-26 ("(1) A general law is one which applies to and operates uniformly upon all members of any class of persons, places or things, requiring legislation peculiar to itself in the matter covered by the law. (2) A special law is one which relates either to particular persons, places or things, or to persons, places or things which, though not particularized, are separated, by any method of selection, from the whole class to which the law might, but for such limitation, be applicable. (3) A local law is one whose operation is confined within territorial limits other than those of the whole State or any properly constituted class of localities therein.").

Note that an 1874 amendment to the Texas Constitution of 1869 provided: "The legislature shall not pass local or special laws in any of the following enumerated cases: that is to say, for locating or changing county seats, regulating county or town affairs, regulating the practice in courts of justice, regulating the duties and jurisdiction of justices of the peace and constables, providing for changes of venue in civil and criminal causes, incorporating cities and towns, or changing or amending the charter of any city or village, providing for the management of common schools, regulating the rates of interest on money, remitting fines, penalties, or forfeitures, changing the law of descent. In all other cases when a general law can be made applicable, no special law shall be enacted; or in any case when a general law can be made applicable, no special law shall be enacted. The legislature shall enact general laws providing for the cases before enumerated in this section, and for all other cases which, in its judgment, may be provided by general laws."

—Attorney Steve Smith

Recent Decisions

• City of Tyler v. Liberty Utilities Corp., 571 S.W.3d 336, 342-43 (Tex.App.–Houston [1st Dist.] 2018) (footnotes omitted) ("With respect to the general prohibition against enacting local or special laws, the Supreme Court of Texas has characterized the purpose as 'a wholesome one' that 'is intended to prevent the granting of special privileges and to secure uniformity of law throughout the State as far as possible.' The Court has observed that the historical . . . . The prohibition on local or special laws in its current form was introduced in the post-reconstruction Texas Constitution of 1876, and it was amended to add Subsection (b) in 2011.")

• Texas Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation v. Lewellen, 952 S.W.2d 454, 465 (Tex. 1997) (citations omitted) ("Moreover, the growers contend that, because of the statute's classifications, it is a local or special law in violation of Article III, Section 56 of the Texas Constitution. A local law is limited to a specific geographic region of the State, while a special law is limited to a particular class of persons distinguished by some characteristic other than geography. Legislation does not violate Article III, Section 56, however, as long as there is a reasonable basis for its classifications. As explained above, the Act satisfies this test.")

• Maple Run at Austin Mun. Utility Dist. v. Monaghan, 931 S.W.2d 941, 948-49 (Tex. 1996) ("It is well settled that Section 59(b) authorizes the Legislature to pass local legislation creating specific conservation and reclamation districts without violating Article III, Section 56. . . . Under these circumstances, Section 59 cannot reasonably be read as authorizing local legislation that arbitrarily singles out a community for financial regulation. For the foregoing reasons, we hold that section 43.082 is not authorized under Article XVI, Section 59 of the Texas Constitution, and therefore is a prohibited local law under Article III, Section 56.")

Historic Decisions

• Robinson v. Hill, 507 S.W.2d 521, 526 (Tex. 1974) ("Any classification on the basis of population is subject to this complaint, and that circumstance alone is not a sufficient basis for holding the statutory classification unconstitutional. The Legislature has rather broad power to make classifications for legislative purposes, and there is nothing here to suggest that the line drawn is arbitrary or capricious or a mere device used for the purpose of giving a local law the appearance of a general law. See Miller v. El Paso County, 136 Tex. 370, 150 S.W.2d 1000. In our opinion the statute is a general law and does not violate Art. III, Sec. 56, of the Texas Constitution.")

• Board of Managers of the Harris County Hospital District v. Pension Board of the Pension System for the City of Houston, 449 S.W.2d 33, 38 (Tex. 1969) ("The fact that Section 23a applied, when passed, only to the City of Houston does not make it a local or special law. As a matter of fact, Article 6243g applied only to the City of Houston when it was passed in 1965, but all of its provisions, including those added by Section 23a, are applicable to any city having 900,000 or more inhabitants according to any future Federal census. In this respect the Act differs from the one stricken down in City of Ft. Worth v. Bobbitt, 121 Tex. 14, 36 S.W.2d 470 (1931).")

• Devon v. City of San Antonio, 443 S.W.2d 598, 601 (Tex.Civ.App.–Waco 1969, ref'd) ("There are no restrictions that limit its operation to any city. It is general and uniform in its application to all cities which may now or hereafter fall within its reasonably broad class. Appellant does not suggest any basis for holding that the classification in the Act is unreasonable or arbitrary, or that it was put in general form by the legislature merely to evade the Constitution, and we find none. To the contrary, considering the subject matter of the Act, we perceive, without discussing, substantial grounds for the classification made by the legislature. The Act is a general law.")

• Smith v. Davis, 426 S.W.2d 827, 832 (Tex. 1968) ("Further, the classification limiting the applicability of Section 2b to counties with 650,000 or more inhabitants is not unreasonable, because this classification includes all counties to which the section would otherwise be applicable. . . . We do not have to consider the effect of the population bracket as if it discriminated against smaller counties with teaching hospital facilities, because it does not do so; and we may assume that the legislature would recognize the possibility of an unreasonable classification in the event a state-supported medical school were created in a smaller county at some time in the future.")

• Cameron County v. Wilson, 326 S.W.2d 162, 167 (Tex. 1959) ("Because of the breadth and territorial extent of the State, its varied climatic and economic interests, and the attendant problems of transportation, regulation and general needs incident to a growing and active population, we have been and will again be faced with the need and demand for legislation which affects all the people of the State generally, yet which, in its direct operation will apply to one locality or to a comparatively small number of counties. . . . The scope of such legislation should not be restricted by expanding the nullifying effect of Article 3, § 56 of the Constitution.")

• Smith v. Decker, 312 S.W.2d 632, 635-36 (Tex. 1958) (citation omitted) ("However, it has long been held that the use of population brackets alone to direct legislation toward a particular county needing a particular type of legislation will not in itself save the law from being unconstitutional as a special law if the classification bears no reasonable relationship to the objects sought to be accomplished. There appears to be no logical or apparent reason for the exclusion from the Act of counties having cities of 100,000 to 349,999 inhabitants. There must be a substantial reason for the classification such as attempted here, otherwise the Act must fail.")

• Rodriguez v. Gonzales, 227 S.W.2d 791, 793 (Tex. 1950) ("The primary purpose back of the adoption of this section was to secure that uniformity in the application of law which is essential to an ordered society. The section is not of doubtful construction, but is a plain mandate from the people to the Legislature. The prohibition is against any 'local or special law.' We are not concerned with any distinctions which may be drawn between a local law and a special law, for in our opinion the Act under review is both a local and a special law within the meaning of the constitutional provision. This is so clear to our minds that we shall not discuss the question at length.")

• State Highway Department v. Gorham, 162 S.W.2d 934, 937 (Tex. 1942) ("If the Act be construed as a special law, depriving the State of a defense in a particular case, it is unconstitutional, as being violative of Section 3 of the Texas Bill of Rights, which provides that all men shall have equal rights. It is also violative of Article III, Section 56, of our State Constitution, which provides that no local or special law shall be enacted where a general law can be made applicable. . . . It certainly was not the intention of the framers of our Constitution that the State should have certain defenses against some individuals, but not against others similarly situated.")

• Miller v. El Paso County, 150 S.W.2d 1000, 1001 (Tex. 1941) ("It is intended to prevent the granting of special privileges and to secure uniformity of law throughout the State as far as possible. It is said that at an early period in many of the states the practice of enacting special and local laws became 'an efficient means for the easy enactment of laws for the advancement of personal rather than public interests, and encouraged the reprehensible practice of trading and 'logrolling.'' It was for the suppression of such practices that such a provision was adopted in this and many of the other states of the Union. 25 R.C.L., p. 820, § 68.")

• Bexar County v. Tynan, 97 S.W.2d 467, 470-71 (Tex. 1936) ("Notwithstanding it is true that the Legislature may classify counties upon a basis of population for the purpose of fixing compensation of county and precinct officers, yet in doing so the classification must be based upon a real distinction, and must not be arbitrary or a device to give what is in substance a local or special law the form of a general law. . . . There are many things connected with the history of this bill in the Legislature which convincingly indicate that the House and Senate regarded it as purely a local bill, but we do not deem it necessary to enumerate them here.")

• Lower Colorado River Authority v. McCraw, 83 S.W.2d 629, 636 (Tex. 1935) ("In the first place, it is settled that a statute is not local or special, within the meaning of this constitutional provision, even though its enforcement is confined to a restricted area, if persons or things throughout the state are affected thereby, or if it operates upon a subject that the people at large are interested in. Stephensen v. Wood, 119 Tex. 564, 34 S.W.2d 246. An examination of this act convinces us that it operates upon a subject that the state at large is interested in. In fact, the business and operation of this district is not restricted to a particular area.")

• Allison v. State, 76 S.W.2d 527, 528 (Tex.Crim.App. 1934) ("We see nothing in the provisions of chapter 28, Acts Regular Session, 37th Legislature (1921), creating the county court at law No. one for Tarrant county, violative of any provision of our Constitution. The law creating said court is and was not a local or special law, such as is forbidden by the terms of section 56, art. 3, of our Constitution. While it is true of this, as of all courts, that the law creating same necessarily fixes territorial limits to its jurisdiction, the fact that such territorial limit is one or a number of counties, in no way operates to deprive such law of its character as a general law.")

• Smith v. State, 49 S.W.2d 739, 743-44 (Tex.Crim.App. 1932) ("Again, the effort of the Legislature, by amending [the relevant law], after the census of 1930 disclosed that McLennan county had by virtue of increased population passed beyond its operation, to hold McLennan county within the purview of the act, manifests, under the decisions, a purpose, by a pretended classification, to evade the constitutional inhibition, and, under the guise of such classification, to enact a law designed for McLennan county alone. . . . Hence the opinion is expressed that a violation of the provisions of article 3, § 56, of the Constitution is manifested.")

• City of Fort Worth v. Bobbitt, 36 S.W.2d 470, 472-73 (Tex. 1931) ("[W]e do not mean to hold that an act general in its nature and terms would be in contravention of the above constitutional provisions, merely because at the time of its passage it only affects one city; in fact we hold to the contrary. We think, however, that an act which is so drawn that by its plain and explicit provisions it is made to apply to one city only in the state, and can never in any contingency apply to any other city, is just as repugnant to the constitutional provisions under discussion as though the name of the city to which the act does apply had been written into the act in the first instance.")

• O'Brien v. Amerman, 247 S.W. 270, 271 (Tex. 1922) ("It is urged in support of the first two grounds of attack that the law was enacted for application by the city of Houston alone, between that port and the Gulf, when the conditions of pilotage were in no wise different there and elsewhere . . . . There are such substantial grounds for the classification made that the articles would stand the test of the strictest rule applied in such an inquiry. Classification of pilots according to port population and municipal terminal facilities, having a reasonable basis and operating uniformly on those coming within the same class, violates no provision of the Constitution.")

• Bell County v. Hall, 153 S.W. 121, 122 (Tex. 1913) ("The honorable Court of Civil Appeals for the Third district held on this appeal that the act . . . . Upon a careful consideration of the question, we concur in this conclusion, and do not regard it necessary to supplement the able opinion written in the case by Chief Justice Key. In relieving Bell county from the operation of the general law, this act, in effect, changed the administration of its affairs in every particular provided by the general law, and thus by indirection regulated its affairs as effectually as though it had directly and affirmatively prescribed a different method for their management.")

• Clark v. Finley, 54 S.W. 343, 345 (Tex. 1899) ("Indeed, it is perhaps the exception when a statute is found which applies to every person or thing alike. . . . The tendency of the recent decisions upon the subject, as it seems to us, is to drift into refinements that are rather more specious than profitable. It is said in some of the cases that the classification must be reasonable; in others, that it must not be unreasonable or arbitrary, etc. If it is meant by this that the legislature cannot evade the prohibition of the constitution as to special laws by making a law applicable to a pretended class, which is, in fact, no class, we concur in the proposition.")

• Lytle v. Halff, 12 S.W. 610, 614 (Tex. 1889) ("Every law fixing the territory which shall constitute a judicial district is necessarily local in its character, but the power of the legislature to do this is expressly recognized. The creation of two judicial districts in a county operates no further towards the regulation of the affairs of the county than does the establishment of one, and it seems to us that the act in question is not within the meaning of the constitution on regulating the affairs of a county; for that paragraph of the section referred to has application to such affairs as are common to all the subdivisions of the state referred to in it.")

• Beyman v. Black, 47 Tex. 558, 566 (1877) (citation omitted) ("Indeed, it has not been argued that the act violates any of the [specific] provisions of the constitutional amendments of January, 1874, forbidding . . . and that 'the Legislature shall pass general laws providing for the cases before enumerated in this section, and for all other cases which, in its judgment, may be provided by general laws.' Even if the law could be regarded as a local or special act, its passage would be taken as the judgment of the Legislature, that the case was not one which could be provided for by a general law, and their decision is conclusive of that question.")

• Orr v. Rhine, 45 Tex. 345, 352-53 (1876) ("[W]hen this statute was passed, May 26, 1873, there was no constitutional restriction upon the power of the Legislature to enact local laws. There was, at least, no explicit and direct restriction of this kind until the ratification of the amendments to the Constitution, January 26, 1874. It is, we think, a rule of construction, to be generally adhered to in the construction of constitutions as well as statutes, that they operate prospectively, unless the words employed, or when the object in view and the nature and character of the provision, clearly show that it was intended to have a retrospective operation.")

Library Resources

• Vernon's Annotated Constitution of the State of Texas (this multi-volume and up-to-date resource is available at all law libraries and many municipal libraries)

• The Texas State Constitution: A Reference Guide (this one-volume resource is available at most law libraries and some municipal libraries)

• The Constitution of the State of Texas: An Annotated and Comparative Analysis (this two-volume resource is available at most law libraries and some municipal libraries)

Online Resources

• Constitution of the State of Texas (1876) (this resource is published and maintained by the University of Texas School of Law)

• Amendments to the Texas Constitution Since 1876 (this resource is published and regularly updated by the Legislative Council)

• Reports Analyzing Proposed Amendments (this resource is published and regularly updated by the Legislative Reference Library)