Congressional Glossary
What is a discharge petition?
A discharge petition forces a bill out of a House committee and onto the floor once 218 members, a majority of the House, sign it. It is the main way around leadership control of the agenda.
In one sentence
A discharge petition forces a bill out of a House committee and onto the floor once 218 members, a majority of the House, sign it. It is the main way around leadership control of the agenda.
Signatures needed: 218 of 435 House members, a majority of the full House
What a discharge petition does
A discharge petition is the House's escape hatch for a bill stuck in committee. Most bills die quietly because a committee never acts and the majority leadership decides what reaches the floor. A discharge petition overrides both. Once 218 members, a majority of the full House, sign the petition, the committee is discharged from the bill and the House must consider it. The Clerk of the House posts every active petition and its signers at clerk.house.gov.
How the process works
A member may file a discharge petition on a bill that has sat in committee for 30 legislative days. Colleagues then sign at the rostrum, in person. When the 218th signature lands, the motion to discharge ripens after a further seven legislative days, and any signer can call it up on the second or fourth Monday of the month. The House votes on discharging the committee and, if that carries, takes up the bill itself. Signatures have been public since 1993, which turned signing into an open act of defiance rather than a quiet one.
Why 218 signatures are hard
The math sounds simple and the politics are not. Members of the majority party face heavy pressure not to sign, because every signature is a public strike against their own leadership's control of the floor. Petitions routinely stall a handful of names short while leaders offer the holdouts reasons to wait. That is why hundreds of petitions have been filed since the modern rule took shape in 1931 and only a few dozen have ever reached 218 (history.house.gov).
When discharge petitions worked
The best-known modern success is campaign finance reform. In 2002, a discharge petition forced the Shays-Meehan bill, the House companion of McCain-Feingold, to the floor after leadership had blocked it, and the bill became law. In 2015, a petition discharged the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, which then passed the House 313 to 118. Even failed petitions matter: leaders sometimes schedule their own vote once a petition creeps close to 218, so the threat can succeed where the paperwork does not.
The Senate's cousin: the motion to discharge
The Senate has no petition, but a senator can move to discharge a committee from a measure, and those motions get roll-call votes. The 119th Congress shows two recent attempts, both efforts to force foreign policy measures out of committee. A motion to discharge S.J.Res. 172, on removing U.S. forces from hostilities, failed 47 to 48 on June 16, 2026, and a motion to discharge S.Res. 616 from the Foreign Relations Committee failed 44 to 50 the next day. Both appear in the live list below.
Recent Senate motions to discharge
2 roll calls shown, newest first. Each row links to the official record.
Common questions
A discharge petition is a House procedure that forces a bill out of committee and onto the floor without the leadership's cooperation. When a majority of the full House, 218 members, signs the petition, the committee loses control of the bill and the House must take it up.
218, a majority of the House's 435 members. Signatures have been public since 1993, and the Clerk posts each petition's signers online, so signing is a visible break with party leadership. That visibility is the main reason most petitions never reach the threshold.
Rarely. Only a few dozen petitions have reached 218 signatures since the modern rule was adopted in 1931. The 2002 campaign finance law and the 2015 Export-Import Bank reauthorization both reached the floor this way, and a nearly complete petition can push leaders to act on their own.