Texas House Republicans attempted on Friday to disrupt a routine vote on several bills authored by Democrats. That didn't stop Democrats from their own plan of disrupting lawmakers from passing constitutional amendments, which require a level of bipartisan support in order to pass. Prior to the House passage of Senate Bill 2, which created a school voucher-like program, Democrats reportedly threatened to withhold their votes on future constitutional amendments unless Republicans agreed to put SB 2 to Texas voters.

After that failed, Democrats are making good on that promise. "At this point, really what the Democrats are doing by, again, withholding their votes is showing that their threats are credible, but they're not necessarily accomplishing anything with it at this point," Joshua Blank, research director at the Texas Politics Project, said. Amending the constitution requires a higher threshold than any other bill.

Instead of a simple majority, such a bill requires a two-thirds majority; in the House, that means 100 votes. Republicans only hold 88 seats, requiring at least 12 Democrats to join in order to pass such a bill. On Monday, the House passed its first joint resolutions, which amend the constitution, in weeks, only when Democrats opted to support the legislation.

"Now that Democrats have decided to act more like a traditional opposition party, since they're being treated more like the minority party than they have been in the past, they have to accept the fact that the majority party is going to take more shots, and is going to try to make their life in the legislature more difficult, because that's what Democrats are doing as well," Blank said. A handful of hardline Republicans, in turn, disrupted a traditionally routine vote on Friday by opposing every bill authored by Democrats on the Local, Consent, and Resolutions Calendar. That docket of bills seeks to quickly streamline passing bills that are expected to pass.

That push only delayed votes on bills, with lawmakers placing them on the docket for floor debate on Tuesday. In a statement afterward, those Republicans cited that "The Democrat caucus, with the exception of a few, has prevented constitutional amendments from passing," as justification for their move to oppose those Democrat-led bills.