With very little fanfare (and scant reporting in the media), State House committees decided the fate of thousands of bills under consideration earlier this month. According to Rule #10 of the Joint Rules of the Senate and House of Representatives, every joint committee must decide upon every bill it has been assigned by the first Wednesday of December, which fell on December 3rd.
There are exceptions to this rule. For example, the Health Care Financing Committee has until January 28th to decide on bills referred to them. Bills that were filed after October 1st are also exempted from this deadline. Instead committees have 60 days to decide on them. But this December 3rd deadline was a make or break milestone for most of the bills introduced this year.
Possible Fates For Bills
In order to adhere to the December 3rd deadline, joint committees were required to do one of the following actions for every bill they were assigned:
- Give it a 'favorable report', recommend its passage, and send it to another committee for review (typically the Ways and Means Committee). Bills that receive favorable committee reports are by no means guaranteed to pass. Many bills languish and die in the Ways and Means Committee. Nonetheless, it is still good news for a bill to receive a favorable report.
- Give it an 'adverse report', which essentially kills the bill for this legislative session.
- Recommend a study on the bill's impact, which is a polite way of killing the bill for the legislative session. (An even more passive-aggressive option is to literally do nothing by the deadline, which automatically sends the bill to a nice farm upstate for "study".)
- Give themselves an extension to decide upon the bill, kicking the can to a later date. (That must be nice....)
The Search for Bill Info
As we've established, joint committees were required to make "final reports" by December 3rd on all bills referred to them before October 1st. It would be reasonable to expect that committees would clearly inform the general public about their bill decisions within a day or two of this deadline.
Unfortunately, that has not happened. Weeks have now passed since this deadline, and many bills still do not have updates listed on the State House website. As a result, finding a committee's decision on a specific bill can require an inordinate amount of detective work.
If a bill's page doesn't have a post-December 3rd status update, the next place to look for this info is its assigned Joint Committee web page. Once there, click on the 'Bills' tab, then click on 'Reported Out Of Committee' and look for the bill there by its number.
Instead of browsing through hundreds of bills listed, search for a bill number under the 'Reported Out of Committee' tab. For example, if you search for 'S.1053' on the Joint Judiciary Committee page, you will see:
The bill's 'Report Type' is listed as 'Favorable', which means it has been recommended to pass by Senators on the Joint Judiciary Committee. Huzzah! 🎉
The Epic Quest For Deadline Extensions
But what about bills still listed as 'Currently In Committee' after this December 3rd deadline? It's safe to assume that these bills have been granted an extension. But it's ridiculously hard to find the new deadlines for these bills. This makes it challenging for bill advocates to plan campaigns around supporting these bills, which is probably the point.
Let's take as an example S.1043, a bill that would remove legal liability for restaurants and stores that donate unused food to food recovery organizations. It is endorsed by anti-hunger advocates because it should lead to increased donations to food-aid organizations.
This bill is listed as "Currently In Committee" on the Joint Judiciary Committee page, but there is no extension date listed. The bill's page has no updated info either.
After hitting this wall, I reached out to Jonathan Cohn, Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts for advice. He recommended searching Senate and House journals for bill updates. These journals document the official record of each chamber's activities and are the first place where bill extensions would be published.
Sure enough, the Senate Journal's December 4th issue listed extensions for numerous bills. Because the document is so tedious to read, I searched the pdf for '1043' and discovered that the Senate's new deadline to decide S.1043's fate is March 2nd. Wasn't that easy?
The House Is Even Worse
Now let's try looking for updates on a House bill. The Immigrant Legal Defense Act (H.1954) is an important bill which would ensure that immigrants facing imminent deportation are provided with legal representation when they cannot afford to hire an attorney. This bill is one of three bills that were prioritized this year by immigrant rights groups and has received considerable media attention. With so many people interested in this bill, surely the House Clerk updated the bill's status on the State House website, right?
Wrong. As of December 21st, the bill's page has no updates under its 'Bill History' since its November hearing. Searching for the bill on the Joint Judiciary Page shows that the bill is listed as 'Currently in Committee', but once again no deadline extension is listed.
Next, I tried searching for the bill number in each House Journal issue published after December 3rd to no avail.
As a last resort, I tried searching for 'Judiciary' in the House Journal issues. At last, I found a note in the December 11th issue indicating that House Judiciary Committee members gave themselves an extension of March 18th for any bills they have not yet decided upon.
Since H.1594 is listed as 'Currently In Committee' on the Judiciary Committee website, it's safe to assume that it was given this March 18th extension.
But, there's one small wrinkle: Joint Rule #10 specifies that any Joint Committee matter not acted upon by the December 3rd deadline gets recommended for a study by the committee chair of the branch to which that bill belongs. It is plausible (though admittedly unlikely) that H.1954 falls into this category. Since the Judiciary Committee did not list that bills that received this March 18th extension, we cannot be certain that H.1954 benefited from it.
Regardless, it shouldn't be this hard for the public to find out basic information about bills under consideration by the State House. Massachusetts has one of the largest and most innovative technology sectors in the country. There is no excuse that our State House website is this difficult to navigate and that important updates to legislation are not shared in a timely fashion.
Additional Reading
Jonathan Cohn, "Beacon Hill 101: Joint Rule 10 Day", Progressive Mass Blog, December 2, 2025.
"What is the Joint Rule 10? Priority Legislation Reaches an Important Step", Metropolitan Area Planning Council, December 3, 2025.
