Quorum counting

Quorum issues have vexed efforts to have a special Texas legislative session in 2025. Meanwhile, in State v. Bondi, a Fifth Circuit panel majority held that the House may constitutionally count Members who vote by proxy toward a quorum. It reasoned that the U.S. Constitution’s Quorum Clause “does not require physical presence,” emphasizing that the Constitution speaks only of a “majority” and leaves each chamber broad discretion to decide how to “ascertain the fact” of that majority.

Specially, the Court concluded that remote‐participation rules adopted during the pandemic merely supply a permissible method for determining whether enough Members are participating, not a redefinition of the quorum itself. Because the underlying legislative record indisputably showed that more than half the House either voted or authorized a proxy to do so, the court declared that “the Constitution’s text, history, and tradition support remote voting and counting proxies as sufficient for quorum.”

The panel warned that reading the Constitution to demand physical presence would empower a minority to block legislation and “undermine the very purpose of the Quorum Clause: to ensure majoritarian rule.”

A dissent argued that the Quorum Clause’s reference to “compel[ling] the Attendance of absent Members” and more than two centuries of congressional practice show that a quorum exists only when a majority are physically in the chamber. By allowing the House to satisfy the quorum requirement with paper proxies, the dissent argued, the court stripped the Clause of its structural safeguard against minority rule and permitted Congress to “define the Constitution’s quorum requirement out of existence.” No. 24-10386, Aug. 15, 2025,