When we last reported on this subject right after the March 21 filing deadline, we were staggered by the sheer number of bills creating new or expanded legal duties, new causes of action, new or expanded civil and administrative penalties, new criminal penalties, new DTPA expansion, new statutory damages (including punitive damages), new attorney general enforcement authority, and new mandatory attorney’s fees and costs.
You can refer to our post on March 21 for the gory details, but for our current purposes we will try to assess the breadth of the liability landscape that emerged from this session. Let’s begin with a general perspective. In 2025, legislators filed a total of 9,014 bills and resolutions, about a 4.6% increase over 2023’s 8,616 (you can check my math on that). House members dropped 5,862 of these, Senators 3,162 (in 2023, the numbers were 5,619 and 2,726). Even though the members filed more bills, however, the number of bills that actually got through the process and to the governor’s desk, fewer passed than last time, 1,135 in 2025 (12.6%) to 2023’s 1,252 (14.5%). And whereas, in 2023, 751 House bills and joint resolutions and 508 Senate bills survived, this session the number of House bills finally passed dropped to 627, while the Senate number rose to 599. (I hope all these figures reconcile.)
It seems plausible, based on these numbers, that the very significant turnover in the membership of the House could be at least partly responsible for the uptick in House filings (perhaps as well as for the downtick in enrolled House bills). If we did a deeper dive into the number of House bills reported from House committees and the number of House bills that eventually died in Calendars, we might make a judgment on how the committees, many of whom had new chairs and a lot of new faces, functioned, but we’ll leave that for another day. Nevertheless, although the relative inexperience of the House (don’t forget we had a new speaker as well) might have played a role in the numbers, that does not hold equally true for the Senate. Only three of them enjoyed their first session, but everything else was status quo. We can only conclude that, in general, Senators (and the Lt. Governor) were even more active than usual in trying to control the legislative agenda.
So what does this have to do with new causes of action and the other things that come with them? If we break things down to attempt an apples-to-apples comparison between the two sessions, here is what we get:
- In 2023 about 356 new causes of action were filed. (Thus number shocked us at the time, but little did we know what lay in store two years later.) That comes to about 4.1% of the total bills filed. In 2025, however, 763 new causes were dropped, about 8.4% of the total. There is clearly something going on here.
- In 2023, 9 bills were filed expanding the DTPA. This session, the number jumped to 41, 5 of which passed as opposed to 1 in 2023.
- The same trend is true of new penalties. In 2023, we saw 150 filed and only 11 enrolled. This time we saw 218 filed and 37 enrolled.
- As to criminal penalties, there were 18 filed last time, only one of which passed. This time there were 87 introduced, 12 of which passed.
- How well did attorneys do this session in terms of recovering their fees (this includes the attorney general, who runs one of the biggest law firms in the world)? Somewhat better than in 2023, where 76 were filed but only 11 enacted. This time 185 were filed, 15 of which survived. The most disturbing thing in these numbers is the alarming regularity with which mandatory attorney’s fees appear almost as boilerplate language.
- Finally, how much bigger did we make the attorney general’s law firm? Last time, we created 8 new enforcement responsibilities versus 14 this time (out of 148 filed).
Remember that these numbers aggregate bills aimed at businesses, health care providers, and governmental entities. Remember also that these bills are for the most part targeted at specific industries or types of businesses, health care providers, and governmental entities. From our perspective, however, the big takeaway is that what used to be a pretty solid barrier against expanding liability in Texas has crumbled. When coupled with the unfortunate fact that nothing could be done to address noneconomic and medical damages, the commercial trucking loophole, and the threat of public nuisance lawsuits, we have finally arrived at the the destination we saw coming several sessions ago.
When about 16.6% of the total bills (5.6% in 2023) filed in a legislative session have one or more aspects that place a heavier compliance and liability burden on businesses (and in some cases put people completely out of business), pre-empt or restrict the independent judgment of health care providers, and penalize governmental entities and employees at the expense of taxpayers, we can be sure that a new day has dawned. There can no longer be any question that the Legislature has turned to a different model of regulation, one that substitutes unpredictable, erratic, and highly politicized retribution in place of collaboration and a predictable administrative process. We can sit here and say that it could have been worse, and, boy, it sure could’ve been. But “could’ve been worse” hasn’t been the legislative standard around here, at least not since 1993, when the Legislature and Governor began building a constructive partnership to make the Texas business climate the best in the world.
Texas is still a very attractive place to do business, but how attractive depends on what kind of business someone wants to do here. Undoubtedly, the Legislature favors some more than others, and to the Legislature’s credit, we don’t want some of the others, anyway. The problem is, when you put a target on a specific type of business or health care practice or governmental function, you can’t but help catching up a lot of innocent bystanders at the same time. Like it or not, when you’re the eighth largest economy in the world, you can’t just take one brick out of the house and expect the thing to hold up forever. Unlike in the past, this economy is more mobile than ever, and the kinds of business it involves can be done wherever. Texas may be hot right now (and that’s quite literally part of a problem to which we need to pay more attention), but the cumulative effect of an increasingly penal and arbitrary regulatory system should not be underestimated.
New Causes of Action (general) (6): SB 1333 (squatter enablers); HB 783 (online impersonation); SB 1198 (drone operators); SJR 34 (parental rights); HB 4281 (fraudulent crowdfunding); SB 2373 (phishing);
New Causes of Action Against Businesses or Employers/Legal Duties Giving Rise to Tort/Contract Liability (41): SB 243 (migrant labor housing facilities); SB 823 (shrimp sellers/restaurants); SB 261 (cell-cultured protein); SB 1238 (insurers); HB 2221 (insurers); HB 2663 (oil and gas operators); HB 119 (lobbyists); HB 2963 (digital electronic equipment manufacturers); HB 3229 (renewable energy component recyclers); HB 3805 (money services businesses); HB 3806 (state trust companies); HB 3809 (battery storage facilities); SB 2337 (proxy advisors); HB 4179 (landlords); HB 4211 (managing entities of residential arrangements); HB 4215 (delivery network companies); SB 2368 (ERCOT market participants); HB 130 (genome sequencing); SB 3 (consumable hemp products); HB 149 (AI); SB 441 (AI); SB 512 (money services business) SB 790 (landlords); HB 3159 (oil and gas producers); SB 1036 (solar retailers); SB 1254 (professional employer services providers); SB 1313 (tobacco product sellers); SB 1316 (e-cigarette sellers); SB 1806 (disposal wells); SB 1791 (auto insurers); SB 1802 (landlords); SB 2371 (skimmers); SB 2420 (app stores/developers); SB 3388 (surplus lines); SB 815 (utilization review); SB 1236 (PBMs); SB 926 (HMOs); SB 1238 (insurers); HB 2221 (life and health insurers); SB 493 (health plan issuers); SB 17 (foreign entities)
New Civil or Administrative Penalties Against Business and Employers (31): SB 3; SB 243; SB 261; HB 2663; HB 3229; HB 2368; HB 3159; SB 1036; SB 823; HB 145; HB 4215; HB 581; HB 1403; HB 3611; SB 512; SB 1333; HB 5560; SB 2221; SB 2371; SB 2373; HB 119; HB 149; SB 441; SB 1236; SB 815; SB 3388; SB 926; SB 1238; HB 2221; SB 493; SB 17
New Criminal Penalties Against Businesses (8): HB 449(AI); SB 3 (manufacturers and sellers of consumable hemp products); SB 1806 (oil and gas) SB 2024 (app stores); SB 1313 (e-cigarettes); SB 127 (report child abuse); SB 1316 (e-cigarettes); SB 17 (foreign entities)
New Causes of Action Against Health Care Providers (10): HB 216 (health care providers); HB 742 (retaliation for reporting human trafficking); SB 984 (informed consent for individualized investigational treatments); HB 2038 (supervision of physician graduates); HB 3441 (vaccine manufacturers); SB 2167 (massage establishments and schools); HB 4076 (health care providers); HB 130 (genome sequencing); HB 4454 (patient solicitation); SB 1188 (medical facilities and practitioners)
New Civil or Administrative Penalties Against Health Care Providers (5): HB 130; HB 216; HB 742;HB 3749; HB 4454
New Criminal Penalties Against Health Care Providers (2): HB 2510; HB 4454
New Causes of Action Against Governmental Entities and Employees (7): SB 33 (abortion); SB 1035 (political subdivisions); HB 3373 (school administrators); SB 40 (political subdivisions); SB 840 (cities and counties); HB 4623 (public schools); SB 1851 (cities)
New Civil or Administrative Penalties Against Governmental Entities/Employees (1): HB 3372
New Criminal Penalties Against Governmental Entities/Employees (1): SB 127
Waiver of Sovereign Immunity (2): HB 4623; SB 33
New DTPA Actions (5): HB 2963 (digital electronic equipment manufacturers); SB 2420 (app stores); SB 2337 (proxy advisors); HB 4211 (managing entities of residential arrangements); SB 441 (AI)
New Statutory Penalties/Punitive Damages (4): HB 483; HB 130 (lifts cap on punis); HB 4623; HB 4281
New Attorney’s Fees/Costs (15): HB 783; SB 1035;HB 2963; HB 4281; HB 4623; HB 130; SB 40; SB 512; SB 2371; SB 2373; HB 119; SB 3411; SB 33; SB 1333; HB 149
New Attorney General Enforcement Power (14): HB 119; HB 2187; SB 33; HB 149; SB 1188; HB 1403; HB 2963; HB 130; SB 512; HB 3159; SB 1851; SB 2371; SB 2373; SB 17
License Refusal/Disciplinary/Revocation Authority (3): HB 149; SB 916; SB 3
