On April 30, the Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 2330, championed by Senator Tan Parker (R-Flower Mound), which would prohibit governments in Texas from processing dues payments for public sector labor unions and associations. The bill passed by a vote of 19-12, with Sen. Robert Nichols casting the lone Republican dissent.
Senator Parker, an advocate for limited government and fiscal transparency, framed the legislation as a necessary step to preserve the neutrality of government institutions.
“Currently, state and local governments act as financial intermediaries in the collection of membership dues for various organizations, including labor unions,” said Parker during floor debate. “This arrangement places the government in a position where it is facilitating activities, often political in nature, that should remain outside of its purview.”
SB 2330, also known as the Government Accountability and Transparency Act, is co-authored by Senators Brandon Creighton, Phil King, and Mayes Middleton. A House companion bill is sponsored by Rep. Carl Tepper (R-Lubbock). The bills seek to end a long-standing practice that critics say improperly entangles the government in union operations.
Currently, the state of Texas collects dues from public employee paychecks and distributes those funds directly to unions. According to the Texas Comptroller, more than $65 million has been funneled to unions by the state over the last decade—excluding additional collections made by school districts and local governments.
Supporters of the bill, including the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Texas Conservative Coalition, argue that the government should not act as a conduit for union funding. They maintain that union membership should be a strictly voluntary financial relationship between an individual and the organization—not one facilitated by taxpayer-funded resources.
In addition, Texas business leaders who support Parker’s bill say that dues collected by the government are often used in pressure and disparagement campaigns against local businesses.
If passed by the House, Texas would join other states—including Florida, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin—that have enacted similar bans on government collection of union dues. Like Florida’s statute, the Texas legislation includes exemptions for public safety personnel covered under collective bargaining and legal consent decrees.
When the bill was enacted in Wisconsin, the majority of teachers in the state stopped paying their union membership dues and most of the unions went out of business. Supporters of the bill say this indicates that the unions are artificially propped up by the tacit endorsement of governments when they provide such services.
While the Senate passage marks a major step forward, the bill now moves to the House State Affairs Committee—where similar legislation was stalled in 2017. Critics of the committee, including Representative Briscoe Cain, have raised concerns that conservative priorities are being intentionally directed to the committee to prevent their passage.
“The bills stalled in the State Affairs Committee (undermine) the people’s will,” Cain wrote on social media. “These measures are backed by conservative grassroots and flagged by Texas GOP as legislative priorities.”
In April, business leaders in the state asked House Speaker Dustin Burrows to refer the House bill to the newly-created DOGE Committee to avoid a repeat of the 2017 outcome. Speaker Burrows allowed the bill to instead proceed to the State Affairs Committee, where a majority of members are said to oppose the bill.