Article III, Section 56 of the Texas Constitution ("Prohibited Local and Special Laws")

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As amended November 6, 2001:

(a) The Legislature shall not, except as otherwise provided in this Constitution, pass any local or special law, authorizing: (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

A local bill proposes a local law that applies to a limited area of the state.

A bracket bill proposes a law that applies to a limited area based on criteria.

Depending on its wording and effect, a bracket bill may be judged a local bill.

A special bill proposes a special law that applies to a limited class of persons.

—Attorney Steve Smith

Recent Decisions

  • 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

  • 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).")
  • 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.")
  • 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.")
  • 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.")

Library Resources

Online Resources

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