When looking for signed legislation, here are a few avenues of research to try:
If you know the bill number or session law chapter, and it's from the 82nd Legislature forward...
Use the Direct Search in the LRL's Legislative Archive System (LAS). For bills that passed, there will be a "signed legislation" link in the History tab. (If the bill passed but was filed without the governor's signature, there is still a "signed legislation" link. It will have signatures of the Chief Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate, but no governor's signature.)
If you know the topic of the bill, but not the citation...
LAS is a good starting point. You can use the Advanced Search to search by subject, author, session, committee, and other access points. You also can view a complete list of the bills passed in a session by navigating to Direct Search, selecting the legislature in the "search by session law chapter" option, and leaving the chapter box blank. This will give you the session's bill/chapter cross reference table, and you can peruse the bill captions to try and locate the number of the bill you seek. You can pull these tables all the way back to the 12th Legislature (1871)! Then, you can use one of the resources below to see if the signed legislation is available online:
- Secretary of State: Signed legislation from the 83rd–86th Legislatures is available on the Secretary of State's website. Links to bills and resolutions from these sessions can be accessed on our Signed Copies of Bills page. On the Secretary of State's page, you can select the type of legislation (house/senate bill, concurrent resolution, joint resolution) to filter the list and then review bill captions.
- The Portal to Texas History: Signed copies from the 78th–86th Legislatures are available in the Texas Laws and Resolutions Archive in The Portal to Texas History.
- Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC): You can access digitized copies of legislative bills and resolutions dated 1836–1884. These digitized records reflect the 1st–9th Congresses of the Republic of Texas and the 1st–18th Legislatures.
Signed bills older than the 78th Regular Session are in the Texas Secretary of State's Government Filings Section records at TSLAC. Please call 512-463-5455 for information on accessing physical copies of signed bills.
Note that signed copies of simple resolutions are not generally retained. Unsigned copies may be found in the bill files at the LRL. If you cannot find a simple resolution online in LAS or Texas Legislature Online (TLO), contact the LRL at 512-463-1252.
