Texas
Tex. Fam. Code §§ 261.101, 261.109, 261.202 — Texas Family Code — Mandatory Reporting and Privilege Override
- Clergy named as mandatory reporter?
- Yes
- Confessional exemption?
- No
- Statute
- Tex. Fam. Code §§ 261.101, 261.109, 261.202
- Clergy named
- Expressly
- Pending
- —
Texas has one of the broadest mandatory-reporting statutes in the country. Section 261.101(a) of the Family Code requires any person with reasonable cause to believe a child has been abused or neglected to make an immediate report. Section 261.101(c) removes any doubt about clergy: the duty applies 'without exception' to persons whose communications are otherwise privileged, and it names clergy directly in that list. The privilege is abrogated twice: at the reporting stage under §261.101(c), and again at the evidentiary stage under §261.202, which bars excluding evidence in child-abuse proceedings on privilege grounds except for attorney-client communications. Bordman v. State, decided by the Fourteenth Court of Appeals in 2001, confirmed that this dual abrogation reaches criminal prosecutions, not only civil CPS proceedings. The penalties reflect legislative seriousness, though they reach clergy less far than the text first suggests. Section 261.109 makes knowing failure to report a Class A misdemeanor. For mandated professionals, meaning those licensed or certified by the state, concealment elevates the offense to a state jail felony under §261.109(c); clergy report under the all-person duty in §261.101(a), so that elevation does not reach them. In 2025, the 89th Legislature passed SB 127, extending the statute of limitations for the professional failure-to-report offenses under §261.109(c): three years from discovery for the misdemeanor, four years from discovery for the concealment felony. The limitations period for the all-person offense, the one that reaches clergy, was left unchanged. The Senate Research Center's own statement acknowledged that failure to report 'goes unpunished in many cases of ongoing abuse', the legislature's candid diagnosis that a strong statute has not produced proportionate enforcement. Texas also ended anonymous reporting to the state abuse hotline in 2023. House Bill 63 amended §261.104 so that the Department of Family and Protective Services is not authorized to accept an anonymous report on its hotline; a caller unwilling to give a name is told they may instead report to any local or state law enforcement agency, where anonymous reports are still accepted. That change narrowed the channel for all reporters, including clergy, without touching the underlying duty or the privilege override. The clergy loophole itself is closed in Texas. What is left is a narrower gap, part text and part enforcement. On the text, SB 127 fixed the limitations problem the legislature acknowledged, but only for licensed professionals, leaving clergy on a two-year clock that runs from the day of the silence and expires before most clergy-abuse disclosures ever surface. On enforcement, no reported prosecutions of clergy for failing to report have emerged from the research record through 2020. So the reform here has two parts: extend SB 127's discovery-based limitations period to the all-person offense that reaches clergy and give that offense the intent-to-conceal felony that §261.109(c) already provides for professionals, and then actually charge the cases that are still in time. That distance between what a statute commands and how often it is used is the work UCO takes up in Texas and in every state whose words outrun its record.