A 100-year-old piece of state law that homeowners have used for decades to block housing in Texas cities could soon be written out of existence.
House Bill 24 (authored by Republican state Rep. Angelia Orr) was supported by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and is currently sitting on Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk awaiting signature. If Abbott allows the bill to become law, it would bring massive change to the “protest and notice” provisions of state law that serve as a roadblock to landowners, or city leaders, seeking to initiate zoning changes in cities throughout the state.
Under current law, property owners surrounding land that a neighboring owner is seeking to upzone (that is, build more housing on) can band together and file a petition with the city. If 20% of neighboring landowners sign a petition, then to have upzoning approved, the subject landowner must win a supermajority vote of the governing body with zoning authority over their land (in Austin, that’s nine of 10 City Council members).
Property owners who have sought to upzone their land say the protests are costly, because they require additional time and help from high-dollar consultants needed to navigate the bureaucracy that accompanies the zoning process. Opponents of this provision of state law refer to it as the “tyrant’s veto” because it gives a small number of landowners outsized power over individual landowners – which, opponents say, has blocked countless rezoning cases and, through the courts, has given small groups of city residents power to kill land-use changes that would affect an entire city.
That’s what happened in 2019 when City Council was days away from approving the most ambitious rewrite of Austin’s antiquated Land Development Code (the rules that determine what kind of buildings can be built throughout the city) proposed in 40 years. After Council approved the comprehensive code rewrite two out of the required three times, on a 7-4 vote, just over a dozen property owners sued to block the third and final vote. They argued that the city did not allow property owners to protest the LDC changes, as required by state law; a few months later, a Travis County district court judge agreed and the code rewrite was dead. This kind of lawsuit became a favored tool of landowners opposed to rules that would accelerate housing construction.
But HB 24 would change the law to make it harder for landowners to block individual zoning cases and efforts by local elected officials to rewrite citywide zoning rules. The proposed law raises the required petition requirement to 60% of landowners and it allows a simple majority of the land-use body to approve a protest zoning case. The proposed changes also make clear that protest rights do not apply to comprehensive changes to zoning rules.
The loss of the lawsuit tool was fiercely opposed by groups like Community Not Commodity – the advocacy group most responsible for blocking local efforts at boosting housing construction in Austin throughout the past decade. Some of the plaintiffs who filed suit against the city over proposed LDC changes in 2019 testified against the bill at a committee hearing in March.
“[HB 24] makes it much harder for people to file lawsuits against illegal municipal zoning,” Barbara McArthur told the committee. “Everything in this bill clears the way for redevelopment of neighborhoods that support families.”
But, Orr explained earlier in the meeting, the bill was written to ease the supermajority requirements that “have historically blocked needed housing projects and worsened housing shortages and affordability issues” seen in Texas cities.
“The proposed process shifts decisionmaking back to elected officials and away from small opposition groups,” Orr said.
The deadline for Abbott to sign bills into law is June 22. If he does that, or if he declines to veto it, HB 24 will become law.
This article appears in June 20 • 2025.