The Texas Legislature’s 2025 session gavels out in a little less than three weeks — operating word there being “gavel.”
Those wooden mallets are used by judges to call a courtroom to order, by auctioneers to say “sold” and, of course, by Texas legislators at the Capitol.
The thunk of a gavel is enough to sound the start of a new day in the Texas House or Senate, to show voting on a bill has ended, or even get noisy lawmakers in line.
The kind of wooden gavel used varies between chamber and setting. Gavels used on the House floor are actually larger than the ones used in the Senate, according to the state’s official gavel order forms. Those House gavels come in at a whopping 16 inches from the head to the handle. Think of one of the biggest hammers you could buy at Home Depot.
For committee meetings, gavels are usually much smaller — with some coming in at only 10 and a half inches.
But with all that banging in the Texas Legislature, gavels are bound to break — and break they do. As a matter of fact, one of the more recent breaks happened on the House floor last month, during debate on the state’s controversial school voucher bill.
After hours on measure, tempers flared. Rep. Brooks Landgraf, who was acting as the presiding officer of the House at the time, tried to restore order in the chamber but broke the gavel and shattered the glass speaker’s desk while doing so.
“The head of the gavel bounced up into the air after being struck, and then just came down on the glass top there at the speaker's rostrum,” he said.” “Everything was kind of in slow motion, and I saw it all drop right there. So unfortunately, that kind of brought everything to a screeching halt.”
But breaking a gavel is actually a momentous occasion. After a representative breaks one, it’s engraved and is gifted to them as a keepsake. Still, Landgraf says he didn’t do it on purpose.
“So kind of a freak accident, really,” he said. “Thankfully, nobody was hurt.”
And it can happen to anyone. Rep. Dade Phelan, former speaker of the Texas House, has wielded — and broken — his fair share of gavels.
“I had one pop off and hit the poor young reading clerk down the front or the back of the shoulder,” he said. “So, yeah, you gotta be careful when you're near the dais.”
In the Texas House, José Menéndez says people take pride in breaking a gavel.
“Everybody makes a big noise,” he said. “There's 150 members. They tend to be a little younger, and so when they go up there to hit that thing, they tend to try to see who can hit it the hardest.”
Menéndez is a senator now, but the San Antonio Democrat previously served 15 years in the House. In the Senate, gavel smashes aren’t done — at least on purpose.
“There's a little more sense of decorum,” he said. “We don't like things being too loud.”
But the Senate still has its own fun with them. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick does some light hazing with freshmen senators by handing them a gavel where the sides have been replaced with rubber — rendering the mallet silent.
In late March, Sen. Adam Hinojosa was the latest victim of Patrick's practical joke. Hinojosa called it a “great prank.”
“From the outside, it feels and looks exactly like a regular mallet but the ends are rubber so who’s gonna go grab a mallet and start feeling for the ends?” he said. “You assume it's a regular mallet.”
One of the oldest #txlege traditions is having a little fun with freshmen senators. While we’re hard at work passing bills and debating policy it’s nice to have some lighthearted moments. like when Lt. Gov @DanPatrick handed me a rubber gavel and had me preside over the Senate! pic.twitter.com/zdWeofc8J2
— Senator Adam Hinojosa (@ElectAHinojosa) March 31, 2025
As for where the gavels of the Texas Legislature come from, Phelan says they’re all manufactured by Texas Correctional Industries.
“They're made in our Texas prisons, along with other woodworks,” he said, adding it allows inmates to learn a skill. “They do great work.”
And Phelan, whose own tally for broken gavels is at five, says each gavel’s made differently.
“I've had gavels that were so heavily lacquered that by the end of the day it looked like it had snowed on the speaker's dais because so much of the lacquer would come off,” he said. “Others, they don't put any lacquer, and that's maybe why they split in half.”
Besides spontaneously splitting, Sen. Menéndez says gavels are also presented to lawmakers for celebratory reasons.
“A lot of people have them engraved with plaques that signify a special occasion,” he said.
Like back in April. Speaker of the House Dustin Burrows gifted an engraved gavel to DJ Daniels, a 13-year-old diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. He’s made it his mission to be sworn in to 1,000 law enforcement agencies across the country.
Most of all, wielding the gavel is a big responsibility — one that Rep. Landgraf hopes Speaker Burrows will entrust him with in the future.
“I wouldn't blame him if he never let me anywhere close to a gavel again,” he said.
The 89th Texas Legislature will come to a close on June 2. But until then, you can rest assured there’ll be plenty more gavel strikes — and maybe even some breaks.
