FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 2, 2025
CONTACT: Imelda Mejia (she/her/ella), [email protected]
AUSTIN, Texas — June 2 marks Sine Die, the official end to the regular 89th Texas Legislative Session.
Over the past 140 days, Texans have seen numerous controversial bills—like Senate Bill 2, a voucher bill, Senate Bill 10, the Texas Ten Commandments Bill, and Senate Bill 13, a bill restricting students’ access to library materials—pass through the Texas Legislature.
At the eleventh hour, several bills—notably one that would’ve required voters to prove citizenship status and another restricting transgender and nonbinary Texans from using bathrooms aligning with their gender identity—died after failing to meet crucial deadlines and therefore failed to pass before the end of the session.
Texas Freedom Network and Texas Rising Action spent the session advocating for public education, religious freedom, LGBTQIA+ rights, freedom from censorship, voting rights, immigration rights, and reproductive rights.
Texas Freedom Network Executive Director Felicia Martin (she/her/ella) issued the following response:
“Texans deserve elected leaders who choose to spend the precious months of the legislative session fighting for our freedoms—but when they refuse to do so, it is up to us, the people, to boldly advocate for our friends, neighbors, and loved ones across the state who are so often targeted by lawmakers instead of uplifted. While we can’t deny that this session held many devastating losses for our communities, I am endlessly proud of how the Texas Freedom Network, the advocates we mobilized, our partners, and lawmakers who support our freedoms fiercely fought for Texans these past 140 days.
“As I celebrate the unwavering passion and hope I saw at the Capitol throughout the session, I am simultaneously disappointed in the elected officials who used this session to further an extremist, anti-freedom agenda. Instead of serving Texans, far-right legislators kept waging culture wars. They passed a voucher scheme that steals funds from students in our neighborhood public schools, violated students’ religious freedom by mandating Ten Commandments displays and daily prayer time in public schools, targeted our transgender neighbors by restricting their access to healthcare and government documents that accurately reflect who they are, censored the library materials available to our kids, expanded their unpopular restrictions on our right to abortion by targeting local logistical assistance programs, further criminalized our border communities, refused to expand our voting rights, and so much more in an attempt to steal our power and distract us.
“Yet, in the face of these attacks, we saw Texans show up: waiting over 20 hours to testify on bills, packing the Capitol on the day the voucher scheme was heard, showing love for public schools, rallying for LGBTQIA+ Texans, joining us for TFN Advocacy Day, and staging a Read-In to protest book bans. When it’s time to hold our elected officials accountable at the ballot box, we know these Texans and countless others who value freedom will be ready. We’ll remind voters who fought for them and who fought against them. Together, we can use our voting power to elect lawmakers who will fight for Texans instead of making us their targets.”
Following Sine Die, Governor Greg Abbott has until June 22, 2025, to sign legislation into law.
