How a Bill Must Be Written

The U.S. Constitution says almost nothing about how Congress must write a bill. Idaho's says a great deal. The 1889 framers wrote rules into Article III aimed at familiar legislative abuses: misleading titles, unrelated provisions buried inside popular bills, and statutes changed by cryptic cross-reference. Some of those rules are enforceable in court.

For anyone who reads bills for a living, or testifies on them, these rules are tools. They tell you what a title has to promise, what a bill cannot hide, when a law will take effect, and what to look for in the journals if you think a bill was rushed. This lesson goes rule by rule, with the official text, real Idaho cases and bills, and step-by-step checks you can run on any bill on the Legislature's website.

The rules at a glance

Rule	Section	What it requires
Enacting clause	Art. III, sec. 1	Every bill begins "Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Idaho."
Journal and recorded votes	Art. III, sec. 13	Each house keeps a journal; any three members can demand a recorded yea and nay vote on any question.
Revenue bills	Art. III, sec. 14	Bills may start in either house, but bills for raising revenue must start in the House.
Passage	Art. III, sec. 15	Laws only by bill; printed before final passage; read on three several days in each house (two-thirds may suspend); read at length on final passage; yea and nay vote; majority of members present.
One subject, in the title	Art. III, sec. 16	One subject per act, expressed in the title; anything outside the title is void.
Plain words	Art. III, sec. 17	Acts must be "plainly worded, avoiding as far as practicable the use of technical terms."
Amend in full	Art. III, sec. 18	No amendment "by mere reference to its title"; the amended section must be printed in full.
No local or special laws	Art. III, sec. 19	A list of subjects on which the Legislature may not pass laws aimed at one place or one person.
Signatures	Art. III, sec. 21	Bills and joint resolutions are signed by the presiding officer of each house.
Effective date	Art. III, sec. 22	No act takes effect until 60 days after the session ends, except in an emergency declared in the law.

After all of that, the bill still goes to the governor under article IV, section 10 (Lesson 4).

No law except by bill: printing, three readings and the final vote

No law shall be passed except by bill, nor shall any bill be put upon its final passage until the same, with the amendments thereto, shall have been printed for the use of the members; nor shall any bill become a law unless the same shall have been read on three several days in each house previous to the final vote thereon: provided, in case of urgency, two-thirds of the house where such bill may be pending may, upon a vote of the yeas and nays, dispense with this provision.

Idaho Const. art. III, sec. 15

The section goes on: on final passage, bills "shall be read at length, section by section," the vote is by yeas and nays on each bill separately and entered in the journal, and "no bill shall become a law without the concurrence of a majority of the members present."

Each piece has a purpose:

• Printing means members, and the public, can read the actual words, including amendments, before the final vote.
• Three readings on three days slows a bill down. In Idaho practice, first reading comes at introduction, second reading after a committee reports it out, and third reading right before the floor vote. The days between give members and the public time to react.
• Suspension is the safety valve. If two-thirds of the house agrees on a recorded vote, the house can read a bill more than once on the same day. Look for "Rules Suspended" in a bill's history.
• Reading at length on final passage is why you will see "read in full as required" in bill histories.
• Majority of members present, not of all members, decides final passage. A quorum is a majority of each house (art. III, sec. 10).

Revenue bills start in the House

Section 14 says bills "may originate in either house, but may be amended or rejected in the other, except that bills for raising revenue shall originate in the house of representatives" (art. III, sec. 14). It borrows the idea from the federal Origination Clause, which reserves revenue bills to the U.S. House. In Idaho both houses serve two-year terms, but the rule applies all the same, so a tax bill should carry an "H" number. A Senate bill that raises revenue invites a Section 14 challenge, so watch for Senate bills that add fees or taxes.

One subject, expressed in the title

This is the rule that most often ends up in court.

Every act shall embrace but one subject and matters properly connected therewith, which subject shall be expressed in the title; but if any subject shall be embraced in an act which shall not be expressed in the title, such act shall be void only as to so much thereof as shall not be embraced in the title.

Idaho Const. art. III, sec. 16

Read it as three separate commands:

1. One subject. An act can cover one subject "and matters properly connected therewith." That allows a broad subject, such as "elections" or "taxation," with many related sections. It does not allow unrelated subjects stapled together so that a popular provision carries an unpopular one. Legislators call that logrolling.
2. Expressed in the title. The title, the long paragraph at the top of a bill that starts "RELATING TO," must tell a reader what subject the bill covers. A legislator, or a citizen, should be able to read the title and know what is inside.
3. A built-in remedy. If the act includes something not expressed in the title, the act is void "only as to so much thereof as shall not be embraced in the title." The court cuts out the uncovered part and keeps the rest.

The particularized title trap

Idaho bill titles tend to be long and detailed, and one rule the Idaho Supreme Court has applied for decades explains why drafters take care with them. A general title ("relating to elections") covers everything germane to that subject. But when a title lists specific changes, the Court has held that "the legislation is limited to the matters specified, and anything beyond them is void, however germane it may be to the subject of the original act." That rule comes from Hammond v. Bingham, 83 Idaho 314 (1961). For an amendment to an existing statute, the Court has said a title that "refers by number to the section to be amended" is generally enough, so long as the original act's title was adequate. The trouble starts when a drafter describes some of the changes in the title and not others.

Open questions: budget bills and initiatives

Two recent disputes show how often Section 16 arguments come up, and how often courts decline to reach them.

• Budget bills that change policy. In 2024, developers who had been the high bidders for the former Idaho Transportation Department campus on State Street in Boise sued after the Legislature put language in appropriation bills that stopped the sale. They argued, among other things, that a budget bill cannot amend a statute and that the bills violated the single-subject requirement (Idaho Reports). The Idaho Supreme Court dismissed the case in August 2024 because the developers lacked standing, and said it was not deciding whether the Legislature had exceeded its constitutional authority (Idaho Capital Sun). The question remains open.
• Initiatives. In 2024 Attorney General Raúl Labrador asked the Supreme Court to keep the open primaries initiative off the ballot, arguing in part that it violated the single-subject rule. The court dismissed the petition unanimously and said that claim could not be considered unless voters actually passed the measure into law (Boise State Public Radio). Voters rejected it, so the question was never decided.

Amend in full, in plain words

Section 18 says "No act shall be revised or amended by mere reference to its title, but the section as amended shall be set forth and published at full length" (art. III, sec. 18). The framers were blocking a trick: a bill that says "Section 12 of the act of 1885 is amended by striking the word 'not'" tells a reader nothing unless she has the old act open beside it.

That is why every Idaho bill that changes existing law reprints the whole section being amended. In the printed bills on the Legislature's site, words being removed appear struck through and words being added appear underlined. When you read a bill, read the whole section, not just the marked changes, because the unchanged text tells you what the new words will do.

Section 17 adds a more modest instruction: "Every act or joint resolution shall be plainly worded, avoiding as far as practicable the use of technical terms" (art. III, sec. 17). "As far as practicable" gives drafters a lot of room, so this is more often a useful point in testimony than a winning argument in court.

No local or special laws on listed subjects

Section 19 says "The legislature shall not pass local or special laws" in a long list of cases (art. III, sec. 19). The list includes, among others:

• punishing crimes and misdemeanors, or regulating court practice;
• granting divorces or changing the names of persons or places;
• laying out or vacating roads, streets, parks or other public grounds not owned by the state;
• regulating county business or the election of county officers;
• assessing and collecting taxes, or extending the time to collect them;
• providing for and conducting elections, or designating the place of voting;
• releasing the debt or obligation of any person or corporation.

A local law applies to one place; a special law singles out one person or group. Section 19 pushes the Legislature to write general laws that apply statewide, and leaves particular cases to counties, cities and courts acting under those general laws. When a bill's coverage is defined so narrowly that only one county or one company could ever qualify, Section 19 is the provision to read.

When laws take effect, and the emergency clause

No act shall take effect until sixty days from the end of the session at which the same shall have been passed, except in case of emergency, which emergency shall be declared in the preamble or in the body of the law.

Idaho Const. art. III, sec. 22

The Legislature has added a statutory default on top of the constitutional floor: no act takes effect until July 1 of the year of the regular session or 60 days after the session ends, "whichever date occurs last," unless an emergency is declared (Idaho Code 67-510). That is why most new Idaho laws take effect on July 1. A bill can also set a later date of its own.

An emergency clause usually appears as the last section of a bill: "An emergency existing therefor, which emergency is hereby declared to exist, this act shall be in full force and effect on and after its passage and approval." Many bills carry one; for example, the 2025 bill H 2 used exactly that wording (printed bill).

Can a court strike an emergency clause because there was no real emergency? In Idaho, no. When labor groups challenged the emergency clause on the 1985 right-to-work law, the Idaho Supreme Court held that whether an emergency exists is a policy judgment for the Legislature and "the judiciary cannot second-guess that decision" (Idaho State AFL-CIO v. Leroy, 110 Idaho 691 (1986)). The Court also held that a referendum petition "cannot operate to prevent the act from becoming immediately effective"; the emergency law stays in force at least until the referendum election. Lesson 6 explains why that matters for the people's referendum power.

The 2021 initiative case shows the emergency clause in action. Senate Bill 1110, which made it harder to qualify initiatives, carried an emergency clause, so "it became effective immediately" and organizers had to sue right away. The Supreme Court later struck it down on other grounds, and in the same case held that voters writing an initiative may also set its effective date, "subject to the requirements in Article III, Section 22" (Reclaim Idaho v. Denney, 169 Idaho 406 (2021)).

The journal is the record

How does a court know whether a bill was read three times, or passed by a majority of members present? It reads the House and Senate journals. Section 13 requires each house to keep one (art. III, sec. 13), and Section 15 requires final votes to be entered in it. The Idaho Supreme Court has long held that "a court will not go behind the journal of a legislature to ascertain what was done by that body," and that if a journal is wrong, the Legislature must fix it (Brassey v. Hanson, 81 Idaho 403 (1959), as quoted in Coeur d'Alene Tribe v. Denney (2015)). For reporters and advocates, that has a practical meaning: the journal, not a floor speech or a press release, is the evidence.