Texas Call Recording Laws: One Party Consent

Last updated: September 12, 2026

Every section quoted here was read against the statute text on the Texas Legislature's own site on 2026-09-12. A software company reading a statute is not a lawyer giving legal advice, and the wording that ends up in your greeting belongs to counsel.

Whether you can record a call in Texas

Texas is a one party consent state. Under Penal Code 16.02, a person who is a party to the communication has an affirmative defense to the interception offense, and the agent on the line is that party. Recording your own calls in Texas needs no announcement under the statute by itself.

Why the line stays in the greeting anyway

Texas answers for Texas. The switch that rings your floor holds no opinion about where the caller is sitting, and a number published on a client's website collects calls from everywhere.

Which state's law governs a call that crosses a line is unsettled, and courts have not landed in one place on it. What operators do instead is work to the strictest state touching the call, which on an inbound line means one disclosure read on everything. California wants the consent of all parties to a confidential communication, and a caller in San Diego does not stop wanting that because your building is in Houston.

Say that Houston floor takes 9,200 calls a month across eleven accounts, and four percent arrive from numbers registered in states asking for more than one participant's agreement. That is about 370 calls a month where the Texas answer is beside the point.

One script costs about four seconds at the front of each call, roughly ten hours of talk time a month across the whole floor. Branching the greeting by area code is the alternative, and it breaks the first time a caller keeps a Dallas number after moving to Seattle. Your recording disclosure script holds the versions and the placement rules.

The state by state table here carries fifty one rows, seven of them read against primary text on the relevant legislature's own site. Texas sat in it as a citation and nothing more until this page was written. For the mechanics rather than the Texas version, one party consent covers what being a party buys you.

What Penal Code 16.02 prohibits

The first paragraph of subsection (b) makes it an offense to intentionally intercept "a wire, oral, or electronic communication," and it reaches an attempt or getting somebody else to do it. Grading sits in subsection (f), a felony of the second degree, dropping to a state jail felony for the device and obstruction offenses that the section also covers.

For the words carrying the weight, subsection (a) sends you to Article 18A.001 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. A wire communication there is "an aural transfer made wholly or partly through the use of facilities for the transmission of communications by the aid of wire, cable, or other similar connection," operated by a communication common carrier. Your inbound calls are that.

An oral communication is defined separately, as one "uttered by a person exhibiting an expectation that the communication is not subject to interception under circumstances justifying that expectation." The expectation test lives inside that definition, covering a conversation in a room rather than a call handed to your floor by a carrier. So a Texas phone call arrives with no confidentiality gate to argue over, and the whole fight moves to consent.

Paragraph 4 of subsection (c) gives an affirmative defense to a person not acting under color of law who intercepts a communication where "the person is a party to the communication," or where "one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to the interception, unless the communication is intercepted for the purpose of committing an unlawful act." Your agent satisfies the first branch the moment the call connects.

The word affirmative is doing quiet work. A defense of that kind is raised and carried by the defendant, so it works after somebody decides to charge. On an ordinary floor that never comes up, and it is still why "Texas is one party, we are fine" is thinner than it sounds.

Read the paragraph slowly and the unlawful act proviso sits in the second branch, about a different party's prior consent, rather than the first. Whether a court reads it across both is not settled by the text.

A second door sits in the definitions. An interception device excludes a telephone instrument or transmission equipment supplied by a provider in the ordinary course of its business and used by the subscriber in the ordinary course of theirs. Reading that as a standing exemption for a recording platform goes further than we can support, so carry it as a question.

Who counts as a party to the call

Chapter 16 never defines party, and neither does the definitions article it borrows from. The plain reading is somebody actually on the communication, which your agent is.

Interesting things happen to audio that keeps running past that point. A supervisor on speakerphone in the room, or a warm transfer where the agent drops off while the recorder does not, produces something closer to an oral communication, and the expectation test comes back with it.

Answering services carry a third layer, since the call is answered in a client's business name, worked from that client's account script, and dispatched against that client's on call schedule. Whose consent the recording runs on when three businesses are in the room is answered by neither statute, and inventing an answer would be worse than leaving the gap visible. The question worth putting to a lawyer names the caller's location, yours, the client's, and who the greeting speaks for.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. Penal Code 16.02(c), paragraph 4, gives an affirmative defense to a person not acting under color of law who is a party to the communication, or who records with a party's prior consent.

A participant can record without telling the other side, under the party branch of that paragraph. Somebody who is not on the call needs the prior consent of a party, and the statute pulls that back where the recording is made to commit an unlawful act.

Is it illegal to record phone calls in Texas?

Interception is an offense under 16.02(b), graded by 16.02(f) as a felony of the second degree. The consent exception keeps ordinary business recording clear of it, structured as a defense you would raise rather than a permission slip you hold.

Do you have to tell someone you are recording in Texas?

No announcement is required by Texas statute when a party to the call consents. Floors taking calls from other states announce anyway, since the stricter state's rule is the one that has to be satisfied on a call it touches.

The civil claim sitting underneath all of this

Chapter 123 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code gives a party to a communication a private cause of action against a person who intercepts it, who "uses or divulges information that he knows or reasonably should know was obtained by interception," or who as a landlord, building operator, or carrier knowingly permits one.

Consent does heavier work on this side. The chapter defines interception as an aural acquisition through an interception device "that is made without the consent of a party to the communication." A party's agreement removes the element rather than giving you something to plead later.

Section 123.004 entitles a person who establishes the cause of action to an injunction, statutory damages of $10,000 for each occurrence, all actual damages in excess of $10,000, punitive damages set by the court or jury, and reasonable attorney's fees and costs. Ten thousand dollars an occurrence is the figure to carry out of this page.

So one party consent retires the interception branch and leaves the rest of the chapter standing. Use and divulge is a separate claim, and your agent's consent says nothing about audio that reached you another way, like a client forwarding a recording of their own to score.

All of that assumes the line was read on the call in the first place. A required phrase is the sort of criterion software checks reliably against a transcript, with a timestamp on where it was read, which is why a missing disclosure usually lands as a critical fail. Tone scores worse, and no QA tool has a view on whether your wording is lawful in Texas.

To find out which of the calls already in storage carry the line, a call review scores six months of your own audio against the greeting your counsel approved and hands back the exceptions, at a fixed pilot price.

Sources

Read on statutes.capitol.texas.gov on 2026-09-12 and verified from primary text.

Penal Code 16.02(b), the interception offense, and 16.02(f), grading it a felony of the second degree.
The affirmative defense at 16.02(c), paragraph 4, for a party to the communication or a holder of a party's prior consent, with the unlawful act proviso in the second branch.
Definitions imported by 16.02(a) from Code of Criminal Procedure Article 18A.001: wire communication at paragraph 24, oral communication and its expectation test at 19, interception device at 14.
A private cause of action at Civil Practice and Remedies Code 123.002, with 123.001 defining interception as acquisition made without a party's consent.
Damages at 123.004, statutory at $10,000 for each occurrence, plus actual damages in excess of $10,000, punitive damages, and attorney's fees.

The rest, unverified and routed to counsel:

Whether the unlawful act proviso reaches the party branch ahead of it. Texas case law.
Coverage of a recording platform by the interception device exclusion.
The meaning of party to the communication, undefined in both statutes.
Choice of law on a call crossing a state line, and the strictest state practice.
Third party recording obligations for answering services, not sourced here.
Rule based criteria scoring more reliably than tone. Third party.