We've been working toward this for a while, and it's finally here: you can now search for bills by topic on Query-type bill sheets.
Keyword searching is great, but it has real limits. A search for "artificial intelligence" won't catch a bill that only mentions "algorithmic decision-making" or "synthetic media." You end up either writing elaborate queries to catch every possible phrasing — or just missing bills. Topic-based searching sidesteps that problem entirely. Because every bill has been categorized by what it's about rather than by what it says, you can find relevant legislation even when it uses completely different wording than you expected.
How it works
When you open the Query tab on a bill sheet, you'll see a new Topics filter, sitting just below the Committee Category filter. Here's how to use it:
- Pick a major topic — there are 21 to choose from, covering everything from Health and Education to Immigration, Energy, Civil Rights, and more.
- Add subtopics — once you've selected a major topic, you can choose as many specific subtopics as you like within it. For example, under Immigration you might select Border Security, Deportation, ICE and Refugee and Asylum Policy.
- Add more topic groups — you can repeat the process to layer in additional major topics and their subtopics, giving you a broad or highly targeted search depending on what you need.
The topic categories come from a standard academic classification scheme used to describe legislation across all 50 states and Congress — which is what makes cross-state searching so clean. You can see the full list of topics and subtopics here, including how many bills fall into each category.
Use it alone or with keywords
Topic search works two ways:
On its own: Leave the keyword field blank and just select your topics. You'll get all bills in your chosen states that fall under those subjects — a great way to do a comprehensive sweep across a policy area.
Combined with a keyword search: Add keywords and topic filters together to dramatically cut down on false positives. If you're tracking AI legislation, for example, you could search for "artificial intelligence" and add the Space, Science, Technology, and Communications topic — so you're not pulling in every bill that happens to use the phrase in passing.
What's already classified
We've used AI to classify over 360,000 bills introduced since 2023, across 21 major topics and 256 subtopics. You'll find the coverage on every bill's Summary tab — we wrote about that earlier here if you want the background on how bills get categorized.
Topic search is live now on Query-type bill sheets. Give it a try and let us know what you think — we'd love to hear how it's working for you.