Effective September 1, 2025, Texas Senate Bill 140—often referred to as the state’s “Mini-TCPA”—became law. The change means that text messages are now treated the same way as telephone solicitations under Texas rules. Registration, bonding, scrubbing, and enforcement standards apply just as if you were running a call campaign. This is not a minor adjustment. It places businesses that rely on text marketing squarely within a compliance framework that now carries significant litigation risk.
Texas Mini-TCPA Compliance Obligations at a Glance
- Registration and bond
Solicitors must register each business location with the Texas Secretary of State, pay a two-hundred-dollar filing fee, and maintain a ten-thousand-dollar surety bond. Registration must be renewed annually. Exemptions exist for regulated entities, nonprofit organizations, and outreach to current or former customers, but they should be reviewed carefully.
- Contact time limits
Texas limits solicitations to 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 12 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Sundays. While the statute does not explicitly address whether these hours apply to text messages, the conservative approach is to apply them until further clarification.
- Texas do-not-call list
Campaigns must be scrubbed against the state’s do-not-call registry. Numbers on the list must be suppressed within sixty days, and registrations expire after three years. Continuous re-scrubbing is required.
- Identification and opt-out
Every message must clearly identify the sender and provide a simple way for recipients to opt out. Opt-outs must be honored promptly and logged.
- Recordkeeping
Consent records, scrubbing logs, opt-out confirmations, and registration documents should be maintained for at least four years. This documentation is critical for responding to consumer complaints, demand letters, or agency inquiries.
Our recent article discussing the July 2025 TCPA Class Actions shows a notable rise in class action filings across the country. With text marketing now expressly within Texas’s mini-TCPA, companies that rely on messaging must be mindful of these risks.
