As you may recall, during the 88th Legislative Session in 2023 legislators introduced a record number of bills creating or expanding private causes of action, imposing civil, criminal, or administrative penalties, and authorizing the recovery of attorney’s fees and costs for various types of actions. Many of those bills assigned enforcement duties to the attorney general’s office, while others vested that authority in the courts or regulatory agencies. While most of the these proposals did not survive the process, TCJL spent a very considerable amount of time and resources to identify them and alert our members who might be affected.

This trend appears to be continuing, if not expanding. Since the bill filing period commenced on November 12, we have identified at least 75 bills that follow this pattern (several others impose new or expanded statutory duties and may not be included in this number). Many of these are “refiles” from 2023, but many are new as well. Thus far they represent more than 3 percent of the 2,000 or so bills introduced to date. In the coming weeks, we will focus our attention on those with the broadest general effects or with industry-specific bills aimed at TCJL member businesses and health care providers. We will distribute our first tracking report with bill summaries later this week, so if you see something we missed or have any questions about bills on the list, let us know.

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