The Texas Constitution of 1876 is the state’s current governing document, adopted on February 15, 1876, to replace the Reconstruction-era constitution of 1869 and to lock in a government that would be small, cheap, and hard to centralize. It runs to roughly 87,000 words, making it the second-longest state constitution in the country after Alabama’s, and voters have approved more than 500 amendments to it since ratification. Nearly 150 years in, it still sets the rules for how Texas taxes, spends, legislates, educates, and protects individual rights.
Why the 1876 Constitution Looks the Way It Does
The document is a reaction. The 1869 constitution, drafted during Reconstruction under Governor Edmund J. Davis, had centralized authority in the state government and given the governor broad power over local affairs. White Democrats and agricultural communities associated that structure with military occupation and high taxes, and once Democrats regained the legislature in 1873, replacing it became an immediate priority.
The convention that produced the current constitution opened in September 1875. Its guiding philosophy was straightforward: make government small, cheap, and weak enough that no future governor could wield the kind of centralized control Davis had.1Texas State Historical Association. Constitutional Convention of 1875 The framers wrote in short terms of office, low salaries, and narrow grants of authority. They were not designing a flexible framework for future generations; they were building a cage for government, and they made the bars tight on purpose.
How the Constitution Structures Texas Government
Article 2 mandates a strict separation of powers among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, and it specifically prohibits any person attached to one branch from exercising the powers of another.2Justia. Texas Constitution Article 2 – The Powers of Government That language is more rigid than its federal counterpart.
A Part-Time Legislature
Article 3 creates a bicameral legislature with a 31-member Senate and a 150-member House. Senators serve four-year staggered terms; House members serve two years. Texas is one of only four states that still limits its legislature to biennial sessions, so lawmakers meet in regular session only in odd-numbered years. The slow, two-chamber, every-other-year rhythm is a feature, not a flaw: it was designed to make lawmaking hard.
A Plural Executive Instead of a Strong Governor
Rather than concentrating executive power in the governor, Article 4 distributes it across several independently elected officials, including the Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller of Public Accounts, and Commissioner of the General Land Office.3Justia. Texas Constitution Article 4 – Executive Department Each answers to voters, not to the governor, who cannot fire them or direct their work. This plural executive is a direct response to the Davis administration. It forces cooperation among officials who may belong to different parties or hold competing views, which slows executive action and limits what any one officeholder can do alone.
Two Separate High Courts
Texas is one of only two states, along with Oklahoma, that splits its highest appellate court. The Supreme Court of Texas is the final authority for civil cases; the Court of Criminal Appeals handles all criminal matters.4Texas Tech University School of Law Library. Texas Courts and Court Rules Below them sit fourteen intermediate courts of appeals and hundreds of district, county, and justice courts. Texas picks its judges through partisan elections, a method used for state supreme courts in only eight states.
The Restrictions That Define State Government
The 1876 constitution spends most of its length telling government what it cannot do. The framers built the financial and procedural limits directly into the text so no future legislature could quietly dismantle them.
Short Sessions, Low Pay
Article 3, Section 24 caps regular legislative sessions at 140 days and sets each lawmaker’s salary at $600 per month, which works out to $7,200 per year.5Justia. Texas Constitution Article 3 Section 24 – Compensation and Expenses of Members of Legislature Members also receive a per diem of $221 for each day the legislature is in session, set by the Texas Ethics Commission.6Texas Ethics Commission. Commission Rules Chapter 50 The low pay was intentional. The framers envisioned a citizen legislature of farmers and merchants who would serve briefly and go home.
Hard Limits on Debt and Spending
Article 3, Section 49 prohibits the state from creating debt except in narrow circumstances: temporary revenue shortfalls up to $200,000, repelling invasion, suppressing insurrection, or borrowing specifically authorized elsewhere in the constitution.7Justia. Texas Constitution Article 3 Section 49 – State Debts Any new borrowing authority beyond these categories requires a two-thirds vote of both chambers followed by voter approval in a statewide election. This is why so many ballot amendments deal with bond authorizations. The legislature literally cannot borrow money for a water project or a university building without amending the constitution.
Section 49-a adds a pay-as-you-go rule: the Comptroller of Public Accounts must certify that revenue is available before any spending bill takes effect. If the Comptroller says the money is not there, the bill cannot proceed unless four-fifths of each chamber votes to override.8State of Texas. Texas Constitution Article 3 Section 49-a The practical effect is a balanced budget every two-year cycle.
Rights That Go Beyond the Federal Floor
Article 1 places the Bill of Rights ahead of any provisions about government structure, a deliberate choice signaling that individual liberties precede and constrain government authority.9Justia. Texas Constitution Article 1 – Bill of Rights In several areas, Texans get more protection than the U.S. Constitution guarantees.
Section 3 declares that all people have equal rights and that no person or group is entitled to exclusive public benefits except as compensation for public service.10Justia. Texas Constitution Article 1 Section 3 – Equal Rights Section 3a, added by amendment, prohibits discrimination based on sex, race, color, creed, or national origin.11Justia. Texas Constitution Article 1 Section 3a – Equality Under the Law The federal Equal Rights Amendment never achieved ratification, but Texas voters wrote their own version into the state constitution.
Section 9 protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and requires warrants to be supported by probable cause and to describe the place to be searched with specificity.12Justia. Texas Constitution Article 1 Section 9 – Searches and Seizures Texas courts have at times read this provision strictly in criminal cases, suppressing evidence that federal courts might allow under the Fourth Amendment.
Section 13 contains the Open Courts guarantee: all courts shall remain open, and every person who suffers an injury to person, property, or reputation has a right to a legal remedy.13Justia. Texas Constitution Article 1 Section 13 – Open Courts This provision has real teeth. Texas courts have used it to strike down legislative limits on lawsuits when those limits unreasonably block access to the courts, and it is one of the more frequently litigated sections of the entire constitution.
Homestead and Property Tax Protections
Texas’s homestead protections are rooted in the constitution itself. Article 16 shields a family’s homestead from forced sale for most debts, meaning creditors generally cannot seize your home to satisfy a judgment. This protection predates the 1876 constitution and has been a feature of Texas law since the days of the Republic.
Article 8, Section 1-b layers in property tax relief. Every residence homestead receives a $3,000 exemption from state taxes and a $15,000 exemption from school district taxes.14Justia. Texas Constitution Article 8 Section 1-b Homeowners who are 65 or older or who have a disability qualify for additional exemptions and, importantly, a tax ceiling: once the exemption applies, their school district taxes on that property cannot increase as long as they remain in the home. Local governments may also exempt up to 20 percent of a homestead’s market value from their own property taxes. Because Texas has no state income tax, these constitutional provisions carry outsized weight in household finances.
The Duty to Fund Public Education
Article 7 directs the legislature to establish and fund a system of free public schools.15Justia. Texas Constitution Article 7 – Education It also creates the Permanent School Fund, a constitutionally dedicated endowment built from state land revenues. Income from the fund flows into the Available School Fund, which is distributed to school districts, so a portion of public school funding operates outside the biennial budget. The legislature still controls the much larger share.
Because Article 7 requires “suitable provision” for public education, courts have repeatedly been asked to decide whether the funding system meets that standard. The tension between the property tax restrictions in Article 8 and the education mandate in Article 7 has produced some of the most consequential court battles in Texas history.
How the Constitution Gets Changed
Article 17 sets out the only method for changing the Texas Constitution: a proposed amendment must receive a two-thirds vote from all members of both the House and Senate, then win approval from a simple majority of voters in a statewide election.16Texas State Law Library. Constitution of 1876 – Article XVII There is no citizen initiative. Unlike the roughly two dozen states that let voters place amendments on the ballot through petition drives, Texas requires every amendment to originate in the legislature.
Because the framers wrote so many specific rules into the text rather than leaving details to statute, amendments come constantly. Bond authorizations, property tax exemptions, university funding formulas, and water infrastructure programs all require constitutional amendments rather than ordinary legislation. Voters have approved more than 500 amendments since 1876, and the ballot regularly carries a half-dozen or more proposals. Many are technical and pass quietly. The volume is not instability; it is the predictable result of a constitution that tried to anticipate every contingency and left almost no room for legislative discretion.
Where Federal Law Takes Over
The Texas Constitution operates inside the larger framework of the U.S. Constitution, and the Supremacy Clause of Article VI means federal law overrides conflicting state provisions. Where the Texas Bill of Rights offers broader protections than the federal Constitution, those broader protections stand because they do not conflict with federal law; they simply give Texans more rights than the federal minimum. Where a state provision conflicts with a federal statute or constitutional requirement, the federal rule controls.
This matters most in individual rights. Through the incorporation doctrine, the U.S. Supreme Court has applied most of the federal Bill of Rights to state governments via the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The First, Second, and Fourth Amendments are fully incorporated, so Texas must respect those rights regardless of what its own constitution says. The Fifth Amendment is partially incorporated: Texas is not required by federal law to use grand jury indictments for criminal prosecutions, though it does so under its own constitutional provisions. The Seventh Amendment right to a civil jury trial has not been incorporated, but Texas independently guarantees jury trials in civil cases through its own Bill of Rights.
Why It Has Never Been Replaced
Texas has tried to replace the 1876 constitution and failed. The most serious effort came in 1974, when the 63rd Legislature convened as a formal constitutional convention. After months of deliberation, the convention dissolved on July 30, 1974, having failed to secure the necessary two-thirds vote for a new document.17Texas Senate. Texas Senate News The following year, the legislature submitted essentially the same text to voters as a series of eight proposed amendments. Voters rejected every one. An earlier push in 1917 passed both chambers but died when Governor James Ferguson refused to issue the proclamations needed to call an election for convention delegates.
The practical reality is that the amendment process, cumbersome as it is, has proven flexible enough to keep the 1876 framework functional. Replacing the entire document would require agreement on hundreds of contentious provisions at once, and no political coalition in Texas has managed that.