The heart of BillTrack50 is the bill page. There’s one for each bill, resolution or memorial introduced across the 50 states, DC and Congress since 2011. You can access these bill pages whether or not you have an account. There are many ways you can come across a bill including through a registered free citizen account (where you can do a quick search for bills), via a paid subscriber account (where you can find, track and share bills), or by finding a link on the web.
When you come across a bill number on BillTrack50 you can click the number to be taken to the bill page. Each bill page has a number of tabs which you can click to get different information:
The red underline shows which tab you are viewing.
Reading a bill
Let’s get started with a typical bill.
Summary
In addition to the bill’s name and number (read more about bill numbers here), the first thing you will notice on the page is the graphic across the top showing the status of the bill:
- Introduced: The bill has been introduced (or pre-filed) but not assigned to a committee yet.
- In Committee: The bill has been assigned to a committee but hasn’t left the originating chamber.
- Crossed Over: The bill passed a floor vote in the originating chamber and is now being considered in the other chamber (engrossed).
- Passed: The bill has been passed in identical form in both chambers (enrolled). The legislature is done with this bill.
- Signed/Enacted/Adopted: The bill has been signed by the appropriate executive (governor, secretary of state, president) or the time period allowed for a veto has expired. The bill will go into effect on the date defined in the bill, or based on the rules of the state.
- Dead: The bill has not passed and cannot make further progress, usually because the legislative session it was introduced in has ended sine die.
- Vetoed: The bill was vetoed by the appropriate executive.
- Veto Override: The veto of the executive was overridden by the legislature. The bill will go into effect on the date defined in the bill, or based on the rules of the state.
Below the graphic, you’ll see the rest of the basic summary information about the bill including introduced session, bill summary (from the state), an AI generated summary (created by us using an AI service), a committee category (what kind of committees has it been sent to), sponsors, last action, and link to our source of data for the bill. You may also find a companion bill link included at the bottom of the summary page if this bill is related to any other bills in this session. Finally, notice that the sponsor names are links; if you want to know more about the legislator you can click the link and go to our legislator page.
The URL to the bill will always remain the same, and anyone can click through to see the bill, so feel free to share the bill link.
There is a count of how many people have looked at this bill page on our site at the top right, as well as social icons for Facebook and X (Twitter) to facilitate easy sharing of the bill.
Bill Text
The Bill Text tab is where you go to read the actual text of the bill. These are formatted the same for every state. Whether you are logged in or not, you can use the bill version drop-down to see all the different amendments that have been introduced. By default, we show you the newest first.
If you aren’t logged in, you won’t see the highlight terms, compare version, or track bill options. To have the highlight terms checkbox appear, you need to have found the bill via a keyword query on a bill sheet. If you tick this box, your search terms will be highlighted to help you more easily determine if the bill is relevant to your search.
Regardless of how you search, once you are logged in, you can use the compare drop down to compare different versions of the bill – additions will be highlighted in green and deletions will be highlighted in red. The track button will allow you to add this bill to one of your bill sheets (if you have a subscription with us).
Actions
The Actions screen shows all actions, as the state reported them, with the newest on top. This information displays the same regardless of whether you are logged into an account or not. You will see which chamber the action happened in, the action and the date.
Votes
The Votes tab shows the votes that have been reported on the state page. To see the breakdown of the vote by the individual legislators, select detail by the vote. This information displays the same regardless of whether you are logged into an account or not.
Once you click detail, you will have a pop-up of the legislators who took votes on that bill. You’ll notice that you can click on the legislator’s name and be taken to their profile. You can also sort by legislator, party, and vote columns.
Documents
The Documents tab is a collection of links to the state page. We provide these links to make it convenient to review the bill and any other official document published by the state, such as fiscal notes. This information displays the same regardless of whether you are logged into an account or not.
Committees
The Committees tab lists all the committees that the bill has been sent to. You can click Detail to be taken to the committee page with full details of the committee members, staff and the bills submitted to the committee.
Similar Bills (for bills in 2024 sessions and later)
When you click on this tab, an AI service will generate a list of 250 bills that are similar to the bill you are looking at. The tab looks similar to a bill sheet, with a standard set of columns. A few things to note:
- The list of bills looks and functions like a bill sheet. You can change the column widths, move them around, sort and filter them, and so on in exactly the same was as you can with a bill sheet.
- The bills will be from different states around the country. To just see bills from a particular state, use the filter on the State column. Here's how to filter a column.
- One of the columns is our new AI Summary, to allow you to quickly and easily check if the bill is relevant for you.
- The final column is called Score. It is an assessment, by the AI, of how similar the suggested bill is to the main bill. A top score of 100 would be a perfect match, though anything above about 75 should be a good fit. The results are sorted by Score in descending order, so the best matches will be at the top.
- There are 250 suggested similar bills. It's unlikely that all 250 will be good matches but we provide them for you to check. By scanning down the list of bills you should be able to see when the bills stop being useful.
- The list of similar bills is re-generated every time the tab on the bill is opened, so it always works from the current bill text and draws from the current list of introduced bills. Refreshing the web page will re-generate the list.
- We won't be generating similar bills (or AI summaries) for legislation older than the 2024 sessions, but we will be doing it for bills going forward. Similarly, there are no similar bill suggestions or summaries for resolutions or memorials.