A discharge petition is a tool that lets a majority of the U.S. House force a vote on a bill even when the speaker of the House and the committee in charge of it refuse to bring it up.
To understand why the discharge petition exists, start with how bills normally move. When a member of the House introduces a bill, it is sent to a committee, a smaller group of lawmakers who focus on one subject, such as veterans, education or the budget. The committee decides whether to hold hearings, make changes and send the bill to the full House. Then the speaker and the majority party’s leadership decide what reaches the floor and when, usually through the Rules Committee, which sets the terms for debate. If leadership does not want a vote, a bill can sit in committee until the two year Congress ends and it dies.
The discharge petition is the way around that roadblock. The word discharge here means releasing, as in releasing a committee from its control over a bill. Under House rules, a bill has to sit in committee for 30 legislative days, meaning days the House is actually in session, before members can file a discharge petition on it. The petition is then kept at the clerk’s desk on the House floor, and members sign it in person.
The political news that affects your wallet, your rights and your vote, broken down in plain language. Free in your inbox.
The magic number is 218. A discharge petition needs signatures from a majority of the full House, which is 218 of the 435 members when every seat is filled. Signatures are public, so voters can see which members signed. Once a petition reaches 218, it goes on the House’s Discharge Calendar. After a waiting period of seven legislative days, any member who signed can announce plans to bring it up, and the House must then take it up within a set number of days. The House first votes on the motion to discharge, and if that passes, it moves on to the bill itself.
Members often aim a discharge petition at a resolution rather than the bill directly. That resolution sets the rules for debating the bill, much like the Rules Committee would. That is why news reports sometimes describe a vote on a motion to discharge a resolution “providing for consideration” of a bill.
Discharge petitions rarely succeed. Many members of the majority party do not want to go around their own leaders, and leaders sometimes bring a bill up on their own terms once a petition gets close to 218 signatures, which takes the petition off the table. Still, the threat of a petition can push leadership to act.
A real example came in 2025. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, used a discharge petition to push a bill requiring the Justice Department to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein. House leadership had not scheduled a vote. The petition reached 218 signatures in November 2025 after a newly sworn in member signed it, and the House then passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act 427 to 1. An earlier example is the campaign finance bill known as Shays Meehan, which passed the House in 2002 after supporters used a discharge petition, and later became the McCain Feingold law.
Discharge petitions are back in the news. On Nov. 11, 2026, the House voted 245 to 175 to approve a motion to discharge a resolution setting up a standalone vote on the Major Richard Star Act, a bill that would let about 54,000 combat injured military retirees collect both their full retirement pay and their disability compensation. Every Democrat voting and 34 Republicans voted yes, according to the House Republican Cloakroom tally.
The Senate does not have a discharge petition like the House. Senators have other tools, such as offering a bill as an amendment to a different bill or making a motion to discharge a committee, but those can be slowed or blocked by the filibuster, the Senate rule that usually requires 60 votes to end debate.
A discharge petition matters in everyday life because it decides which issues get a public vote. Leaders can quietly bury a popular bill by never scheduling it. A discharge petition takes that power back to the full House and puts every member on the record. When a representative signs or refuses to sign one, that shows where they stand on whether the bill deserves a vote. The Clerk of the House publishes the names of members who sign each discharge petition, and constituents can call their representative’s office to ask whether they will sign.
