AUSTIN, Texas — If you got lucky one night and got nine hours of sleep, you would have been awake for 15 hours. And that's how long Texas Sen. Carol Alvarado stood on the floor of the Texas State Senate to filibuster Senate Bill 1 this week.
The democratic senator who represents Houston started her filibuster Wednesday evening. It wrapped up just before 9 a.m. Thursday. The State Senate started their day at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
During the 15 hours, Alvarado could not sit, lean against her desk, take a bathroom break or drink water. She wasn’t the first Texas lawmaker to do so either.
In 2013, then-Sen. Wendy Davis, a Democrat who represented Fort Worth, delivered a nearly 13-hour filibuster. She was trying to stop an abortion bill.
Senate Bill 1 is the controversial election reform bill that caused the majority of Texas House Democrats to leave the state to break quorum.
Both Alvarado and Davis used the filibuster during a special session. Alvarado’s filibuster took place during the second special session of the 87th Texas Legislature. Davis’ took place during the conclusion of what would become 2013’s first special session.
SB1 passed immediately after Alvarado finished in the Senate. A similar bill to what Davis blocked passed during the second special session then-Gov. Rick Perry called following her filibuster. Perry ended up signing that abortion bill into law.
Former Texas Sen. Bill Meier filibustered a bill in the Texas Senate for 43 hours in 1977. He holds the state and national record for longest filibuster, according to the Legislative Reference Library of Texas.
Meier was working against a bill related to the state's open records laws. That bill was also signed into law in 1977.
U.S. Sen. from Texas Ted Cruz also participated in a filibuster this week. The filibuster is different when performed in state versus national governments.
Cruz blocked an attempt to pass the For the People Act. This is the same voting rights bill the Texas House Democrats are pushing the U.S. Senate to pass to lessen the impact of the election reform bills in Texas.
Cruz also read Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” in 2013 during a filibuster for then-President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul.
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