He's the East Texas lawyer who wrote the six-week abortion ban that let private citizens sue anyone who helped someone get one, a legal trick that helped it dodge the courts for over a year.
Bryan Hughes is an attorney from Mineola who has represented Senate District 1 since 2017 and previously served in the Texas House. He authored two of the most consequential Texas laws of the last decade: the 2021 six-week abortion ban and the 2021 election law that tightened rules on mail voting and banned drive-thru and 24-hour voting. He's running for another term after building a reputation as one of the Senate's most prolific bill-writers.
Hughes’s take on Texas values
Hughes wrote the 2021 law that restricted mail voting and banned local voting expansions, based on fraud concerns, and in 2025 defended the Trump-requested congressional map redraw as a member of the Senate's redistricting committee. [Texas Tribune; FOX 7 Austin]