Get a state session law, by id or by citation

Server-side time for this request in milliseconds, excluding network transit. Not billed on.

Credits actually charged for this call, never the list price. It includes the /us/statutes/resolve fee when a citation was sent where an id goes. 0 when the call was not charged or was refunded (a body that answers available: false).

Permanent identifier of the law, the key to use everywhere. Shape SSL_{state}_{session code}_{series}[_Y{numberingYear}]_{C<chapter>|B<billKey>}. It never changes: a correction to our reading of a law keeps the old id working. Pass it to GET /us/session-laws/{sessionLawId}.

The law's identifier in the open us1 scheme. Null until its identity is confirmed by a second source and the us1 state shape is minted, so it is null on every state law today. Use sessionLawId, which is always present.

Lowercase two-letter code of the state, dc or pr. Federal acts are not served by this family: they are on /us/statutes/section.

The act's citation as its publisher prints it, falling back to {session label}, ch. {number} when none is printed. It is NOT unique: many states print a bare CHAPTER 1 every session. Key on sessionLawId.

The law cited the way a lawyer writes it, from the state's own form: Minn. Laws 2025, ch. 1, 2025 Fla. Laws ch. 3, Ill. Pub. Act 104-0001, S.L. 2025-12 (North Carolina), Stats. 2025, ch. 12 (California), Ohio S.B. 1 (2025) for a state that numbers no chapters. A law in a special or extraordinary session carries it (Minn. Laws 2025, 1st Spec. Sess., ch. 1). Every value is read back through the grammar that GET /us/session-laws/{sessionLawId} accepts a citation in, and must name this law; one that would not is null, never guessed. Null where the state's form is not known, for a series with no standard form (resolutions, memorials), or for a law with neither a chapter nor a bill key. Where a regular and a special session each have a chapter 1, the bare form is the regular session's law and resolves with that law flagged as the default; the special session's carries its session. Distinct from citation, which is the publisher's printed form.

A compact label for tables and badges: MN ch. 1 (2025), IL P.A. 104-0001, OH S.B. 1 (2025). Not a form to send back: use citableAs or the sessionLawId. Null exactly when citableAs is null.

The numbering series the law belongs to within its session. Most states have one, general. Others number acts, resolutions or local laws separately (public, act, acts, law, public_act, resolve, resolution_chapter, local, ...). An open list that grows as jurisdictions load. Filter with series on the list.

What kind of measure this is: act, joint_resolution, concurrent_resolution, resolution, resolve, memorial or other. An open list. A resolution that was numbered and published among the session laws is included, with isLaw saying whether it binds as law.

The chapter or act number exactly as printed, as a string. It is not always an integer: 1, 2025-12 (Florida), 104-0001 (Illinois), 1A. Null where the state does not number its acts (see billKey).

Normalised bill identifier (chamber and type letters plus the number) that stands in for a chapter number in states that do not number their acts (Missouri, Ohio, Nebraska). House Bill 2 is HB2. Null whenever number is set. Part of the sessionLawId as B<billKey>.

The bill the act originated as, as the publisher prints it. Matches as a citation on GET /us/session-laws/{sessionLawId}.

The year of the numbering sequence the chapter number belongs to, where the state numbers by year (Minnesota, Florida, Texas). It appears in the sessionLawId as _Y2025. A chapter number is only unique within a session and numbering year: Minnesota's regular and first special sessions of 2025 each have a Chapter 1. Null where one sequence runs across the session (Louisiana).

The act's long title as printed, usually beginning An act relating to. It names the code sections the act amends in prose.

The act's short title when the publisher gives one (Ohio, New York, the District of Columbia and a few others do), otherwise null.

Date the governor (or the equivalent authority) approved the act, ISO 8601. Never an effective date: an act is usually in force on a different day, which is effectiveDates. Null when the publisher prints no approval date. Where the registry holds none but the publisher's own dated label on otherDates names the governor's signature, it is filled from that label and approvedDateDerived is true. The approvedFrom and approvedTo filters do NOT match a derived date: they read the registry's own approval date.

True only when approvedDate was not held as an approval date and we filled it from a dated label printed on the act (today South Dakota's Signed by the Governor, listed under otherDates), on an act whose enactmentOutcome is signed or line_item_veto. False when approvedDate is null or is the registry's own. We never read a presented or passed date as an approval, nor a signing label on an act that became law without signature.

Earliest of the act's effective dates we hold. Null when we hold none: a date the publisher does not print, or prints as a relative rule (the day following final enactment), is not guessed. The full list is effectiveDates on GET /us/session-laws/{sessionLawId}.

Latest of the act's effective dates we hold. Equal to effectiveFirst for an act with one date; null when we hold none.

How the measure became, or failed to become, law. signed; became_law_without_signature; veto_overridden; line_item_veto (signed with some items vetoed); vetoed and pocket_veto (not law); not_presented (no governor action recorded, usual for resolutions); approved_by_voters; unknown (the publisher does not say).

True for an act that is law. False for a numbered measure that is not: a vetoed bill, a pocket veto. Null when enactmentOutcome does not settle it (not_presented, unknown).

Whether we serve this law's text. held: the text is served by /us/session-laws/{sessionLawId}/body. withheld: we hold the text but a measured defect keeps it from being served, and withheldReason says what. not_held: we know the act exists and do not hold its text. pending: collected and not yet verified.

Present only when textStatus is withheld: a plain sentence saying what is wrong with the text we hold and what would release it. Free text, not an enum: show it, do not branch on it. The record itself (dates, sources, title) is still served and still correct.

Length of the law's full text in characters, the same as totalChars on the body. Null when there is no text. It is reported for a withheld law too (a fact about the text we hold), though that text is not served.

How many body pages the text takes: charCount divided by the page size (30,000 characters), rounded up. Pages are cut back to a paragraph break, so a long act can run a few percent over. Null unless textStatus is held: there is nothing to read. Reading a whole law costs estimatedBodyPages times the price of one body page (6 credits per page on GET /us/session-laws/{sessionLawId}/body). Ohio's 2025 budget act (HB 96) is 9,571,132 characters, about 320 pages or 1,920 credits to read in full; most acts are a page or two.

SHA-256 (hex) of the full text of this law. It changes only when the text does, so it is the cheap way to tell whether a copy you hold is current. Body pages carry the same value.

Revision counter of our record of this law: 1 for the first collection, higher after a re-collection changed the text or the metadata. Not a legislative version.

Whether the language an amending act strikes and inserts survives in the text. preserved: it is in text, in the convention markupConvention names. lost: the publisher printed it and our text does not keep it, so deleted words can read as law: check the source before quoting. absent: the act carries no such markup that we found. not_applicable: there is no text to carry it.

How preserved markup is written, set only when amendatoryMarkup is preserved. wdiff: deleted language is [-like this-] and inserted language {+like this+}. publisher_literal: the publisher's own words are left as printed (Minnesota prints new text begin / new text end and deleted text begin / deleted text end markers). mixed: both in one text.

What kind of document the text was taken from: session_law_print (the publisher's printed chapter), enrolled_bill, slip_law, volume_extract (carved out of a bound volume) or other. An open list. Null when there is no text.

How firmly the law's identity (session and number) is established. single_source: read from one publisher source, which is every state law at launch. confirmed: agreed by a second independent source, the level at which a lawId can be minted. inferred: derived by us rather than printed. disputed: sources disagree. The sessionLawId is the same at every level.

The PUBLISHER's page for this act, never a Vaquill URL: where a person goes to read the act at its legislature. Where the legislature keeps one page per bill (California, Virginia, New York) it is that page, rebuilt from the session and bill number, so it is present for a law we hold back or only know of. Elsewhere it is the government file the text was collected from (sourceUrl), which can be a volume covering many acts. officialUrlBasis says which. Null when we hold neither. Our own copy of the text is GET /us/session-laws/{sessionLawId}/body, a Vaquill service, and is never reported here.

How officialUrl was found: bill_page (the publisher's page for this one act) or text_source (the government file the text came from, possibly shared by many acts). Null with officialUrl.

What the law's licence class is and what it means for reuse, in a plain sentence: Government public: published by a government body with no restrictive terms, so the text may be reused, including commercially. Every law served with text is of a class that permits reuse; a note saying otherwise describes a record whose text is held back. Free text to show, not an enum to branch on: branch on textStatus.

When this law's record last changed in our registry, ISO 8601 UTC with a +00:00 offset, the same form as the statutes routes. Use it with updatedSince on the list to sync only what changed.

The citation exactly as the publisher prints it. Null when none is printed.

The publisher's own words on the governor's action. enactmentOutcome is our normalised reading of it.

Pages in the source document when it is a PDF. Null for HTML sources.

The official page or file the act's text was collected from, on a government publisher's host: the first sources entry whose role is text and whose hostClass is gov. Open it to verify the text against the publisher. Null when we hold no such source (a law we know exists and have not collected) or when the text source is not a government host. Present on a withheld law too: the official copy is always where to go when we hold the text back.

Present and true only when the read behind publisher, provenance and session.coverageStatus failed on this request. Those three are then absent because we could not read them, not because the act has none: repeat the request to get them. Omitted when the read succeeded.