The Indiana General Assembly has reached the halfway point in the 2025 legislative session, and bills that have been introduced must either be passed into the next stage or dismissed.
Associate Professor of Political Science Gregory Shufeldt describes how the Indiana legislature operates at this point in the session, as bills must be approved in their chamber of origin, either in the Senate or the House of Representatives, to be introduced in the opposite chamber.
After a piece of legislation is introduced, Shufeldt said, the leader of each chamber gets to decide which committee they want the bill to be assigned to. Committees are smaller groups of legislators with specific focus areas, such as healthcare or education, and they schedule hearings or testimonies from private citizens or interest groups that advocate in favor or against a bill.
As of March 16, the following high-profile bills have been referred to the opposite chamber committees:
- SB 1: Property tax relief
- SB 2: Medicaid matters
- SB 10: Voter registration
- SB 11: Minor access and use of social media
- SB 285: Comparative college and career information
- SB 451: Income tax rate
- SB 523: School chaplains
- HB 1001: State budget
- HB 1008: Indiana-Illinois boundary adjustment commission
- HB 1041: Student eligibility in interscholastic sports
- HB 1461: Road funding
- HB 1531: Various immigration matters
Shufeldt said there is a combination of factors that influence whether a bill is passed. Priority bills, experienced and longstanding state legislators, and public support can all determine whether a bill proceeds to the next step. The legislative process can be hard to follow and not necessarily accessible to the everyday voter, Shufeldt said.
“If you’re not going to the state capitol, if you’re not checking the website, it’s very possible that stuff gets added on at the 11th hour that you’re not paying attention to …” Shufeldt said. “Not every citizen or every interest group has the same amount of resources, and so it creates some barriers or inequities… it creates an unlevel playing field of who has access and who has influence.”
A bill has to be voted out of committee before it can move forward in the process, but Shufeldt said most bills do not make it out of that step because Indiana’s state legislature is organized by political party. Each bill needs a majority vote to move forward and there are more Republicans than Democrats, so Democratic bills have a smaller chance of being passed.
According to the official website of the Indiana State Government, the General Assembly meets in a 61-day session for odd-numbered years such as 2025. If bills do not pass by the end of April, they have to wait until the next 30-day legislative session in January. Shufeldt said the nature of Indiana’s citizen legislature only meeting part of the year leads to a “time crunch,” whereas if they met year-round, there might not be a rush to pass bills.
Senate Bill 10 bans the use of a student ID from a public educational institution as valid voter verification, and Shufeldt said this bill is not responding to any pressing problems like systemic voter fraud. He said Indiana has “poor democracy” in terms of how it conducts elections and how it makes voting easier or less accessible.
“There is no evidence in Indiana that students are swapping student IDs to go vote,” Shufeldt said. “In theory, this is a group where voter turnout is already not as high as we would like it to be, and so efforts like this that make it harder for college students to vote seems like ill-informed public policy.”
Senate Bill 2 deals with matters relating to Medicaid, and Shufeldt said this bill could potentially kick more than 200,000 Indiana residents off the program. This can directly impact current and postgrad students as they are often at an “inflection point” when they are no longer eligible to be on their parents’ healthcare and healthcare is often provided by employers. Shufeldt said there is at least one bill out of the remaining bills that probably impacts every UIndy student.
“I would encourage students to check out the website and see what bills are still alive… which bills are dead … there also might be some legislation that people really like and want to get behind,” Shufeldt said. “I think the bills that I am perhaps paying most attention to are the ones related to the process of democracy, like the student ID legislation.” To track every bill’s progress, visit iga.in.gov/legislative/2025/bills.
