Updated at 2:30 a.m. with late-night Senate vote on bathroom bill.

AUSTIN — The Texas Senate will reject the so-called bathroom bill passed in the House late Sunday and request a special committee to work out a compromise on the legislation.

Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, confirmed to The Dallas Morning News late Tuesday he wouldn't accept changes made to his Senate Bill 2078, asking the House to appoint the conference committee. Then just before 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, the Senate tacked its original bathroom bill onto a catch-all piece of legislation meant as a cleanup bill for local county governance.

The Senate hasn't voted on the catch-all bill yet — lawmakers lacked enough votes to pass it immediately — but its House author is planning to kill it out of retribution.

With late-night shenanigans like these, it's clear the fight over transgender Texans and what bathrooms they can use is sure to last until the final days of the 2017 legislative session, which ends May 29.

Christmas in May

More than 14 hours after the Senate gaveled in Tuesday, the chamber began debating House Bill 4180, the so-called Christmas tree bill.

This legislation serves as a mechanism to resurrect dead bills, most of which are narrow and locally-tailored, that weren't lucky enough to make it through the legislative process. Late-night additions to the bill are often noncontroversial, like Plano Republican Sen. Van Taylor's amendment to bar cities from putting caps on the number of backyard chickens residents can keep.

Then just before 1:30 a.m., Brenham Republican Sen. Lois Kolkhorst amended parts of her original bathroom bill as an ornament on the tree.

"I've looked for days for some vehicle to put this amendment on, understanding Senate Bill 6 would not be heard in the House," she said, referring to her bathroom bill. "There was no other vehicle to put this on, and this one I think is germane. I respectfully leave this to the will of the body."

Another ornament on the tree was Paul Bettencourt's divisive property tax bill, which he amended on just before Kolkhorst's bathroom legislation was revived.

The Senate voted 21-10 to add the bathroom amendment to the bill but then failed to get enough votes to pass the entire Christmas tree bill that night. They'll have to wait until Wednesday, during the day, when the threshold for passage will be lower.

1 / 2Republican state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, author of Senate Bill 6, prohibiting transgender-friendly bathrooms, presents the bill on the floor of the senate for debate at the state capitol in Austin, Texas. (Ralph Barrera/Austin American-Statesman via AP)(AP) 2 / 2Texas State Rep. Garnet Coleman, (D-Houston) speaks during the Dallas Morning News Charities kick-off event at the Winspear Opera House Friday, November 18, 2016. Coleman said he would kill a local governance bill because senators amended the so-called bathroom bill onto it. (David Woo/The Dallas Morning News)(DAVID WOO / 20031550A)

But they might as well save themselves the trouble because the bill is dead on arrival.

Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, the original author of the bill, said he will kill the entire Christmas tree bill and all 40-plus of its amendments. In fact, Coleman said he had planned to kill the legislation all along because he knew something like this would happen.

"It was a test and a trick and they wasted hours, hours playing with something that was already dead," Coleman said around 2 a.m. Wednesday. He then joked, "I've been preparing for this since the day this was filed.

"Knowing that they're predictable, I get to kill some of their bills twice."

Coleman said the Senate tried to do this last session — amend a controversial bill onto his local governance legislation at the last minute. He killed the bill that time, too.

Coleman said, "Last session, I was invested in the bill. This session, I have no investment in the bill, other than to make them look stupid."

Senate strikes back

But lawmakers still have time to try to come to a compromise on the bathroom bill. The most likely avenue for that, at the moment, is Senate Bill 2078.

On Sunday, the House tacked on an amendment to that bill (a measure that set up disaster preparedness and school safety requirements) that included new rules for bathroom use in public schools. The amendment, by Marshall Republican Rep. Chris Paddie, would require that school districts provide a single-stall toilet for transgender students.

While Paddie insisted the amendment would require students to use the restroom that matches their biological sex, school districts said they didn't believe they would be forced to kick transgender students out of multi-stall facilities.

Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, who authored the original bill, said he would not agree to the changes and would ask the two chambers appoint a conference committee to hash out a compromise.

"We'll not concur. We'll go to conference and work on some wording," Taylor said Tuesday evening. The sticking point, he added, was the House bill did not appear to separate students in bathrooms and locker rooms based on the biological sex on their birth certificates. "It's been pretty widely reported what they did. It didn't do what they said it was doing.

"I didn't ask for this. It's a school safety bill."

Taylor said he filed the necessary paperwork earlier Tuesday but would not comment on whom he wished to serve on the committee with him. Capitol Inside's Mike Hailey reported earlier Tuesday that Taylor would reject the bill.

On Tuesday, Paddie reiterated his belief that the bill ensures students use the facilities that match their biological sex: "I believe, most importantly, that it accommodates all children."

Paddie said he had not heard, before reporters told him, that the Senate planned to reject the House measure. He wanted to hear Taylor's reasons for doing so.

"We did it in the right way," he said. Paddie added that the House measure was thoughtful and reasonable and considered input from many stakeholders: "There's not a whole of expanding that can be done."

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who heads the Senate, expressed frustration this week that the House's bill didn't go further. Gov. Greg Abbott also weighed in on the disagreement, saying he hoped an agreement could be reached before the session ends.

Patrick has said he will request a special legislative session if lawmakers fail to pass a bill limiting bathroom use by transgender Texans.

Debate over lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights — especially where transgender kids and adults are allowed to use the restroom — has been one of the most divisive fights in the Texas Capitol this year.

Republicans in the Senate, with Patrick at the helm, have led the charge for various measures that would have restricted the rights of transgender Texans to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity in schools, colleges and government buildings like the state Capitol. The House, under Republican Speaker Rep. Joe Straus, debated the issue in committee but did not bring a bill to the floor until last Sunday.

Straus has called the bathroom debate unnecessary and harmful to business, concerns echoed by the LGBT community, which also says the proposals are discriminatory and open transgender Texans to further abuse. The fight grabbed international headlines and the attention of national groups on both sides of the political aisle.

"The Texas Senate announced plans to reject the anti-transgender amendment added to SB 2078 by the House to pursue even more broader harmful, anti-transgender language," Nick Morrow, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign said Tuesday. "As these far-right extremists in the legislature continue to put politics before people and threaten a special session simply to discriminate against LGBTQ Texans, we have to ask: how much discrimination will be enough?"

It's unclear what the final version of the bathroom bill will look like. But since the legislation they'll be considering in conference committee is an education bill, the final version must be restricted to public schools.

Staff writer Brandi Grissom contributed to this report.