A discharge petition takes a measure away from a committee that has not reported it and puts it on the House floor. The Congressional Research Service describes it as "generally the only procedure by which Members can secure consideration of a measure without cooperation from the committee(s) of referral, the majority-party leadership, or the Committee on Rules", and adds that "for this reason, discharge is designed to be time-consuming to execute and difficult to accomplish."
How does a discharge petition work?
It runs on signatures and waiting periods. The procedure lives in clause 2 of House Rule XV — the same rule whose clause 1 governs suspension of the rules. A member may "present to the Clerk a motion in writing to discharge" a committee "from consideration of a public bill or public resolution that has been referred to it for 30 legislative days". The petition is then "placed in the custody of the Clerk, who shall arrange a convenient place for the signatures of Members."
The threshold is a majority of the total membership of the House. The 119th Congress House Manual records that this phrase "was construed to mean 218 Members (Speaker Byrns, Apr. 15, 1936, p. 5509), not including Delegates or the Resident Commissioner". The rule does not allow proxies, and a Delegate or the Resident Commissioner may not sign even by unanimous consent.
Once 218 members have signed, the motion "shall be entered on the Journal, published with the signatories thereto in the Record, and referred to the Calendar of Motions to Discharge Committees." From there, a motion "that has been on the calendar for at least seven legislative days (except during the last six days of a session of Congress)" becomes privileged — but only "at a time or place, designated by the Speaker, in the legislative schedule within two legislative days after the day on which a Member whose signature appears thereon announces to the House an intention to offer the motion." When it is called up, "the House shall proceed to its consideration under this paragraph without intervening motion except one motion to adjourn", "the bill or resolution to which it relates shall be read by title only", and the motion "is debatable for 20 minutes, one-half in favor of the motion and one-half in opposition thereto." Where more than one is pending, "privileged motions to discharge shall have precedence in the order of their entry on the Journal."
Adoption does not by itself bring the bill up. Under clause 2(d)(2), a motion that the House proceed to immediate consideration "shall be privileged if offered by a Member whose signature appeared on the motion to discharge", and "the motion to proceed is not debatable." If it is adopted, "the bill or resolution shall be considered immediately under the general rules of the House", and if unfinished that day "shall remain the unfinished business until it is disposed of." If it is rejected, the measure goes to the appropriate calendar "where it shall have the same status as if the committee from which it was discharged had duly reported it to the House."
What "the general rules of the House" means in practice depends on the measure. CRS: "Once a committee is discharged, the measure may be considered in Committee of the Whole under the five-minute rule, or in the House under the one-hour rule, depending on the nature of the measure itself. If the measure is a 'money measure' (including authorization, appropriation, and revenue measures), the next motion in order is that the House resolve into Committee of the Whole to consider it." The measure comes up "in its introduced form under the standing rules of the House, which include, for instance, 'germaneness' limitations on amendments under clause 7 of Rule XVI."
Two limits keep the procedure from being reused. "Only one motion may be presented for a bill or resolution", and once the House has acted on a discharge motion "it shall not be in order to entertain during the same session of Congress" another motion to discharge on the same measure or on "any other bill or resolution that, by relating in substance to or dealing with the same subject matter, is substantially the same". A motion rendered out of order that way "shall be stricken from that calendar."
The timing rule changed recently. The Manual records that in the 116th Congress the rule was amended to the current Speaker-designated, two-legislative-day form; "under the previous form of the rule, the motion was only privileged on the second and fourth Mondays of a month and the offering Member was not required to provide notice."
Can a discharge petition target the Rules Committee?
Yes, and CRS reports that in modern practice it usually does. Clause 2(a)(1)(B) allows a motion to discharge "the Committee on Rules from consideration of a resolution that has been referred to it for seven legislative days and that proposes a special order of business for the consideration of a public bill or public resolution that has been reported by a committee or has been referred to a committee for 30 legislative days."
The route also covers a measure a committee HAS reported but the Rules Committee will not schedule: CRS describes members introducing "their own rule for the measure" and attempting "to discharge the Committee on Rules from considering that rule", noting that "Here again, the focus of the discharge effort would be the Committee on Rules." CRS notes that "in modern practice, it has become more common for Members to initiate a discharge process on a special rule (H.Res.), not the underlying measure, which discharge proponents would draft and introduce themselves", because the rule's own language lets them set the terms of consideration — "length of debate and control of time, consideration of amendments [if any], or waivers of points of order against the bill". If a discharge motion is adopted on a special rule, "the rule would come directly to the floor for immediate consideration. No motion to proceed is required in this case."
The rule limits what such a resolution may do. A member "may not file a motion to discharge the Committee on Rules from consideration of a resolution providing for the consideration of more than one public bill or public resolution or admitting or effecting a nongermane amendment to a public bill or public resolution."
Why are the signatures public?
Because a discharge petition made them public. "Before the 103d Congress signatures on a motion to discharge a committee were not made public until the requisite number had signed the motion", the Manual records. What changed that, according to the same annotation, was a successful petition "under this clause" that "placed on the calendar a motion to discharge the Committee on Rules from further consideration of a resolution to require publication of the names of Members who had signed pending discharge petitions" — after which "the clause was so amended (H. Res. 134, Sept. 28, 1993, p. 22698)." The 104th Congress then amended the clause "to ensure the periodic publication of such names", and the 112th Congress clarified that the paragraph "does not require the disclosure of actual signatures".
The rule now requires the Clerk to publish the names of members who signed during a week "on the last legislative day of the week", to make "cumulative lists of such names available each day for public inspection", and to "devise a means for making such lists available to offices of the House and to the public in electronic form." CRS reports that in practice the names "are updated by the Clerk on a daily basis and are made available online for public inspection", and that the last Congressional Record edition of each week carries a section identifying members who added or removed their names that week. A signature may be withdrawn "by a Member in writing at any time before a motion is entered on the Journal."
How often do discharge petitions actually work?
Rarely by the direct route, but the recent trend runs the other way. The long-run count comes from CRS Report 97-856, last updated April 17, 2003 and covering 1931 through 2002: "563 discharge petitions have been filed, of which 47 obtained the required signatures. The House voted for discharge 26 times, and passed 19 of the measures involved, but only two became law (and two others changed House Rules)."
The same report counts the indirect route separately, and it is the larger number. "The House considered 10 of the measures on which petitions were completed, under other procedures, and eight of these became law. It also took up, under other procedures, 32 measures on which petitions were still pending. Of these, all but three passed the House, and 17 received final approval." CRS's summary figure: "either the petition was completed, or the measure received floor action by some means, in about 16% of discharge attempts."
Those figures stop at 2002. The current CRS report on the procedure, updated February 12, 2026, describes what has happened since: "Few measures subjected to the discharge process have reached the House floor in recent decades, but there has been a pronounced increase in recent Congresses both in the number of discharge petitions filed and the number that collected 218 signatures. Two discharge efforts in the 118th Congress (2023-2024) reached the threshold, and four did so in the first session of the 119th Congress (2025)."
All six of those targeted a special rule rather than the underlying measure, and only two of the six were actually called up under the discharge rule.
The two that were. In the 119th Congress, H.Res. 432 and H.Res. 780 "were brought up under the discharge rule and adopted, as was the underlying measure each rule made in order" — H.R. 2550, the Protect America's Workforce Act, and H.R. 1834, the Breaking the Gridlock Act, respectively.
The four that were not. In the 118th Congress, H.Res. 961 and H.Res. 1410 were "adversely disposed of (tabled) by unanimous consent, but the House considered the underlying measure each rule would have made in order" — H.R. 5863, "enacted as P.L. 118-148 on December 12, 2024", and H.R. 82, "enacted as P.L. 118-273 on January 5, 2025", each of which "came to the floor under suspension" or "also passed under suspension" in CRS's account. In the 119th, H.Res. 164 — "an effort to allow proxy votes in limited cases" — was "adversely disposed of by the House" via adoption of H.Res. 294, "in favor of an alternative arrangement on paired votes embodied in a separate resolution". And H.Res. 581 "contained language in Section 4 that was repackaged as a bill" — H.R. 4405, the Epstein Files Transparency Act — "passed by the House under suspension, and enacted as P.L. 119-38". The discharge effort on H.Res. 581 itself was defeated: "The House subsequently adopted H.Res. 879 with language in Section 8 to render an adverse disposition of H.Res. 581".
So the three public laws in this cluster reached enactment the same way, and it was not by discharge: in each case the rule the petition targeted was tabled or adversely disposed of, and the underlying measure passed under suspension of the rules instead. In each of the three, the vehicle that carried the measure to enactment was suspension of the rules, not the discharge motion.
What does leadership do when a petition nears 218?
It can write a competing rule. CRS states the dynamic without attributing motive to anyone: "The use of the discharge procedure can challenge the agenda-setting responsibilities of the Speaker and the majority leadership. Consequently, if a discharge petition approaches or receives the required 218 signatures, the Committee on Rules might respond by reporting its own rule for considering the measure, or an alternative to it, perhaps based on negotiations with supporters of the discharge effort."
The seven-legislative-day wait is what creates the window: "The Rules Committee would normally call up its own rule at some point during the period of seven legislative days a discharge motion must remain on the Calendar". If the House adopts that alternative, "it can consider the measure the rule makes in order, but under the terms proposed by the Committee on Rules, not those prescribed by the rule subject to the discharge process."
Adoption works differently on the two routes as well. Under clause 2(d)(1), "If a motion prevails to discharge the Committee on Rules from consideration of a resolution, the House shall immediately consider the resolution, pending which the Speaker may entertain one motion that the House adjourn but may not entertain any other dilatory motion until the resolution has been disposed of", and "If the resolution is adopted, the House shall immediately proceed to its execution." Reporting the measure can also end the effort outright — but again only on one of the two routes. "A discharge process on an unreported measure becomes moot, however, if the committee to which a discharge effort is directed reports the measure before the motion is offered. Since it no longer has possession of the measure, the committee cannot be discharged from considering it." A petition aimed at a special rule survives that: "if a committee reports a measure after a special rule for considering it is introduced, a discharge attempt on the rule providing for that measure's consideration remains valid." CRS gives this as one reason "discharge proponents might direct their efforts toward a special rule they introduce for a particular measure." The rule route has its own mootness path, with two fallbacks depending on how the committee reports. "If the Committee on Rules reports the rule, the discharge petition on the rule becomes moot, but in that case, after seven legislative days, any Member of the Committee on Rules may call up the rule after providing one day's notice to the House of an intention to do so." And "If the Rules Committee reports the rule adversely, any Member of the House may call it up on the second or fourth Monday of a month."
Where did the 218 threshold come from?
From a 1935 amendment, construed the following year. The clause "was adopted December 8, 1931, and amended January 3, 1935", per the House Manual. CRS 97-856 records what that amendment did: "In 1935, it increased the number of signatures required on the petition from 145 (one-third of the House) to 218 (one-half of the House)." The rule text itself says only "a majority of the total membership of the House"; the number 218 comes from Speaker Byrns's ruling of April 15, 1936 construing that phrase.
CRS lists three later changes: the House "eliminated a provision that had the effect of preventing debate on, or amendment of, a special rule reaching the floor through discharge (1991)"; "provided that the names of Members signing discharge petitions be publicly available (1993)"; and "made the procedure inapplicable to any special rule that would have the effect of permitting non-germane amendments, or that would provide for the consideration of more than one measure (1997)."
How this fits the rest of the process
Rule XV carries other routes to the floor besides discharge — suspension of the rules in clause 1, the Private Calendar in clause 5, Calendar Wednesday in clause 6 and the Consensus Calendar in clause 7. Our guide on why bills die in committee covers the referral stage, and our guide on the House Rules Committee covers the special-rule system and those other routes. For the full path a bill travels, see how a bill becomes law.
Drafted from primary source documents by LegislationPatch's automated research pipeline, then reviewed, verified, and edited by James Shearn, Editor. Every figure and citation is checked against the official text before publication. See our editorial standards and AI disclosure.