Every list of weight discrimination legislation in the United States uses the same word for the bills that have not passed and have not died: pending. It is one word doing the work of four very different situations. In one chamber a single named person decides whether the bill can move at all. In another, ten signatures on a piece of paper would be enough. In a third, it takes a floor majority of the entire chamber, and only one member is allowed to ask for the vote.
We read the rules of each chamber in the original on 30 August 2026, together with the record of each bill, and wrote down the exit route. This is what “pending” is covering up.
New York: there is no number, only a person
Senate Bill S9803 of the 2025-2026 session was introduced on 6 April 2026 by Senators Sepúlveda, Krueger and Webb and referred that same day to the Committee on Investigations and Government Operations. The bill’s action list on the Senate’s own site has exactly one line in it, the referral. Nothing else has happened.
The Rules of the Senate for 2025-2026 address this situation once, in Rule VI, section 2, on multi-sponsorship. The relevant sentence reads:
The introducer shall at all times retain exclusive control of the bill until formally acted upon by the Senate and any motion to discharge a bill out of committee by a member who is not the introducer of the bill shall be out of order.
There is no signature threshold in that sentence, because there is no petition. There is a person. Senator Sepúlveda is the introducer; Senators Krueger and Webb are multi-sponsors. If either of them moved to discharge S9803 from committee, the motion would be out of order. The number of senators who support the bill is procedurally irrelevant to whether it can leave the committee it is sitting in.
The bill’s own sponsor memorandum records what that has meant in practice. An identical bill, S.8153-A, died in this same committee in 2022. Another, S.3841, died in this same committee in 2025. A third, S.2440-B, passed the Senate in 2024 and went no further. Three sessions, the same committee, the same result twice.
One detail worth recording while we are in the text: the memorandum describes S9803 as prohibiting discrimination based on “height or weight,” but the section it would actually add to the Executive Law, section 296-e, is titled and drafted in terms of weight alone. Height appears in the memo and not in the statute. We noted the same gap in our reference page on 26 August; reading the bill text again on 30 August confirms it is still there.
Massachusetts: ten signatures, and the clock ran out five months ago
Senate Bill S.1249 of the 194th General Court was presented by Senator Rebecca Rausch and referred to the Joint Committee on the Judiciary on 27 February 2025. The committee held a hearing on 25 November 2025 and reported the bill favorably on 5 February 2026, sending it to the Senate Committee on Ways and Means. That is where it has been ever since.
Massachusetts is the one jurisdiction of the four where “pending” has a countable answer, and the Senate Rules give it twice over. Rule 27C provides two separate routes out of Ways and Means. The first is a floor motion: a majority of members present and voting is enough if the motion is made more than 45 calendar days after referral, and two thirds if it is made earlier. The second route does not involve the floor at all:
In addition to the above procedure, the Committee on Ways and Means shall be discharged from further consideration of a certain matter upon the written petition of a majority of the members of such committee presented to the chair after 45 calendar days following referral of the matter to said committee.
The Senate Committee on Ways and Means had eighteen members on 30 August 2026, counted on the committee’s own membership page. A majority of eighteen is ten. Ten written signatures, delivered to the chair, and the rule says the committee “shall” be discharged. A matter discharged this way counts as favorably reported and goes into the Orders of the Day.
The 45 day waiting period ran out on 22 March 2026. As of 30 August 2026 the bill has been in Ways and Means for 206 days, which is 161 days past the point at which ten signatures would have been sufficient. Neither route has been attempted.
New Jersey: a floor majority, and only one person may ask for it
New Jersey has a companion pair, Senate Bill S1631 and an Assembly version, in the 222nd Legislature. The introduced text of S1631, published by the Office of Legislative Services, is sponsored by Senators Andrew Zwicker of the 16th district and Angela V. McKnight of the 31st, and co-sponsored by Senator Ruiz.
Both chambers adopted rules for this Legislature on 13 January 2026, and both have a discharge provision. They are not the same, and neither is a petition.
Assembly Rule 10:23 requires four things at once. The motion may be made only by the prime sponsor, or, if the bill came from the Senate, by an Assembly member acting on behalf of the Senate prime sponsor. Twenty-four hours’ notice is required. The committee must have met at least three times since the bill was referred to it. And then, in subsection d:
The motion to relieve a reference committee of a bill or resolution shall not prevail unless it receives at least 41 affirmative votes.
Forty-one is a majority of the eighty seat Assembly; the same number appears in Rule 2:2 as the quorum. Rule 10:23(e) adds that the motion may not be offered more than twice for any bill in an annual session, so the attempt is not only hard, it is rationed.
Senate Rule 12:6 is shorter and has a different shape. The prime sponsor or first co-prime sponsor may move; sixty days must have elapsed since referral; twenty-four hours’ notice is required; and the motion needs at least 21 votes, again a majority of the forty seat chamber and again identical to the quorum.
So in New Jersey the answer to “how many” is 41 or 21 depending on the chamber, and the answer to “who” is one specific person. The length of the sponsor list changes neither.
What we could not check today, and are therefore not claiming
The New Jersey Legislature publishes bill status through a page that assembles itself in the browser rather than on the server. On 30 August 2026 neither browser available to us would load it. We could read the bills themselves, which are static documents on the Legislature’s publication server, but not the status pages.
Consequently we are not stating here which committee S1631 currently sits in, and we are not printing a sponsor count for the Assembly companion. Secondary sources give both, and they do not fully agree with one another on the Senate vote that sent the bill across, which is precisely the reason not to repeat them. Those two rows stay open until the primary record is readable again.
What this changes about the word “pending”
A tracker column that says “pending” invites one question, and it is the wrong one: is anybody going to do something? The rules suggest a better one, and it is different in every chamber.
In New York, ask who the introducer is, because nobody else can move. In Massachusetts, ask how many of the eighteen members of Ways and Means have signed, because ten ends it. In New Jersey, ask whether the prime sponsor has given notice, and then count to 41.
Three jurisdictions, three thresholds, and one word covering all of them. We will be adding this column to our reference page on weight discrimination laws, with the rule cited and the date it was read, because “pending” on its own has told us nothing for three sessions running.