Texas Telephone Solicitation Law Now Covers Text Messages

Businesses with marketing strategies that include sending text messages to consumers in Texas could face significant litigation risk and statutory penalties under Texas SB 140, Texas’s new state corollary to the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which went into effect on September 1, 2025.

SB 140 expands Texas’s existing telephone solicitation law, Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §§ 301-306, to explicitly cover text messages when “initiated by a seller or salesperson . . . to induce a person to purchase, rent, claim, or receive” a product of service.

While two subsections of the law previously addressed text messages (related to consent and other obligations for telemarketing), expanding the definition of “telephone solicitation” and “telephone call” to include “transmission of a text or graphic message or of an image” means that all the provisions, including those requiring registration and establishing a private right of action, now apply to text message marketing. Id. §§ 302.001(7), 304.002(10).

REGISTRATION REQUIREMENT

Any business engaged in text message marketing to Texas residents, with a few notable exemptions detailed below, must file an annual registration statement with the Texas Secretary of State. This registration requirement previously applied only to marketing through telephone calls.

Registration requires a $10,000 security deposit, plus a $200 filing fee per business location. 

Registration Exemptions

There are several exemptions to the registration requirement, including but not limited to the following:

• Publicly traded corporations. Id. § 302.053(2).
• Insurance companies. Id. § 302.053(3).
• Supervised financial institutions. Id. § 302.053(4).
• Companies regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. Id. § 302.053(6).
• Nonprofit organizations. Id. § 302.055.
• Certain companies when soliciting former or current customers. Id. § 302.058.
• Companies whose business is mostly derived from sales in their established brick-and-mortar stores. Id. § 302.059.

The exemptions are not all straightforward, and some include terms that are not defined in the law, so a business- and practice-specific analysis will likely be warranted to determine registration obligations. Failure to register with the Texas secretary of state constitutes a class A misdemeanor and violation of the statute. Id. §§ 302.101, 302.251. This violation is also subject to civil penalties. Id. § 302.302.

Private Right of Action and Statutory Penalties

Critically, SB 140 provides consumers with an expanded private right of action under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. In addition to claims regarding a business’s failure to register, consumers can bring claims, for example, for each text message received while their number is on Texas’s no-call list (Id. § 304.052) or against any business that blocks or conceals the business’s identity from the recipient (Id. § 304.151).

Statutory penalties for private rights of action can reach $1,500 per violation, and willful violations permit treble damages. This is a stark change from the previous regime wherein consumers had to jump through administrative hurdles, such as filing a complaint with the attorney general, to initiate an action related to text message violations. Enforcement actions by the Texas attorney general under SB 140 can seek $5,000 per violation.

SB 140 also explicitly permits consumers to recover multiple times from the same defendant: “The fact that a claimant has recovered under a private action arising from a violation of this chapter more than once may not limit recovery in a future legal proceeding in any manner.”  Id. § 302.003(b).

How We Can Help

Morgan Lewis is well-suited to assist clients across many industries to comply with the TCPA and state-corollary statutes, as well as defending against Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act claims.