Texas has long been regarded as one of the most aggressive states for telemarketing enforcement. What began as a modest state-level supplement to the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) has evolved into a sophisticated, multi-layered litigation regime that exposes marketers to catastrophic financial liability, particularly when they fail to comply with a deceptively simple prerequisite: registering with the Texas Secretary of State before making a single solicitation call or sending a single marketing text to a Texas resident.
The legal foundation for this exposure is Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 302.101, a registration requirement enacted in 2009 that has quietly become one of the most powerful tools in the plaintiff's arsenal. Combined with Senate Bill 140 (SB 140), which took effect on September 1, 2025, the registration obligation now carries a private right of action under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA), treble damages, attorney's fees, unlimited serial recovery, and per-call civil penalties reaching up to $5,000 per violation, turning a single unfiled form into potentially existential financial exposure for any business that solicits Texas consumers.
Background: The Texas Mini-TCPA and §302.101
Texas enacted its "mini-TCPA" in 2009 under Chapter 302 of the Texas Business and Commerce Code to supplement federal TCPA protections and impose additional obligations on businesses engaged in telemarketing into or from the state. At its core, §302.101 states plainly:
"A seller may not make a telephone solicitation from a location in this state or to a purchaser located in this state unless the seller holds a registration certificate for the business location from which the telephone solicitation is made."
For the first decade and a half of its existence, §302.101 was enforced primarily through the Texas Attorney General's office, and the private right of action was limited and procedurally cumbersome. Plaintiffs who wished to sue were typically required to first file a complaint with a state agency and wait out a 120-day administrative period before initiating litigation. This barrier kept the volume of private lawsuits relatively modest, but it did not eliminate them entirely.
Early Texas Failure-to-Register Litigation
Even before SB 140 transformed the landscape, courts were awarding significant damages against unregistered solicitors, in numbers alarming enough to prompt concern in the compliance community.
In August of 2021, Dealer Renewal Services was sued by a Texas plaintiff for 28 calls. A court in the Northern District of Texas assessed damages on a default judgment under both the federal TCPA and §302.101, resulting in a total judgment of approximately $221,500. The §302.101 component alone accounted for a substantial portion of that award, with the court treating each call made without a valid registration certificate as a separate violation subject to civil penalties under §302.302 (Cameron v. Dealer Renewal Services)
More recently, in Cacho v. Amity One Debt Relief, a Western District of Texas court entered a default judgment of $88,405.00 against both the company and its CEO personally for 15 calls made without registration. Although awarded on default, the damages breakdown remains instructive: while the federal TCPA violations generated $5,500 in §227(b) damages and $7,500 in §227(c) damages, the failure-to-register claim produced a whopping total of $75,000 in damages, calculated at $5,000 per call for the fifteen violations. The Texas state law claim accounted for 85 percent of the total judgment in that case, dramatically overshadowing the federal TCPA exposure.
Similarly, in Guadian v. United Tax Defense LLC, in granting a default judgment a federal magistrate judge applied the statute to eight separate calls and text messages, treating each transmission as a distinct violation of §302.101, further cementing the per-call damages theory in Texas district courts.
Senate Bill 140 and the Transformation of Texas Telemarketing Law
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 140 on June 20, 2025, and it became effective on September 1, 2025. The legislation was spurred in part by a series of Texas federal court decisions that had allowed businesses to avoid state-law liability for unsolicited text messages on the ground that the prior version of the mini-TCPA covered only telephone calls and not texts. Most notably, Powers v. One Technologies (N.D. Tex. 2022) had held that text messages fell outside the then-existing definition of "telephone solicitation."
SB 140 responded by amending §302.001(7) to define "telephone solicitation" to expressly include "a call or other transmission, including a transmission of a text or graphic message or of an image, initiated by a seller or salesperson to induce a person to purchase, rent, claim, or receive an item." In a single definitional amendment, millions of SMS and MMS marketing messages to Texas residents became subject to the same registration requirements, disclosure obligations, and penalty exposure previously applicable only to voice calls.
The practical scope of SB 140's reach is broad. Importantly, the statute applies to any entity making telephone solicitations from a location in Texas or to a purchaser located in Texas, meaning an out-of-state company with no physical presence in Texas must still register if it sends covered marketing messages to Texas consumers.
The $5,000 Penalty Structure
Section 302.302(a) of the Texas Business and Commerce Code provides: "A person who violates this chapter is subject to a civil penalty of not more than $5,000 for each violation." This begs the question- what exactly constitutes a “violation” triggering the penalty? Perhaps no issue in Texas telemarketing law is more consequential than whether failure to register under §302.101 constitutes a single violation or a separate violation for each call or text transmitted without a valid certificate.
The stakes are asymmetric and potentially enormous. An unregistered company that places 100 calls to Texas numbers faces up to $5,000 if the failure to register counts as a single violation, and up to $500,000 in civil penalties for those same calls if each call counts as a separate violation.
The statutory language cuts toward the per-call interpretation, as does the limited case law that exists thus far. The Cacho court awarded $75,000 calculated at $5,000 per call for 15 §302.101 violations, and the Dealer Renewal Servicesjudgment similarly applied per-call analysis to 28 calls.
While none of these cases represents binding appellate precedent specifically resolving the per-call question as a matter of law, the practical trend in district court damages awards uniformly favors the per-call approach which is, unsurprisingly, the approach professional plaintiffs and their counsel will press in every future case.
The Complaint Toll is Rising
Texas plaintiffs are only just beginning to capitalize on the tremendous windfall the Texas legislature has granted them in the form of SB 140. In January of 2026, TCPA complaints that included a §302.101 claim represented slightly over 25% of all Texas filings. In both February and March, around 36% of Texas filings included a failure register claim. Nearly all of these lawsuits were filed by serial litigants, which suggests that the §302.101 registration claim is spreading amongst the professional plaintiff community. The pleading pattern is now well-established:
- Federal TCPA §227(b) claim for autodialed or prerecorded calls/texts without consent ($500-$1,500 per call, potentially trebled to $4,500)
- Federal TCPA §227(c) claim for calls/texts to numbers on the National DNC Registry ($500 to $1,500 per violation)
- Texas §302.101 registration claim ($5,000 per violation under §302.302, plus DTPA damages of $500 to $1,500 per violation, potentially trebled)
- DTPA claims for mental anguish and attorney's fees (on knowing or intentional violations)
As long as unregistered companies continue to call and text Texas numbers, that total will rise, regardless of whether the statute actually requires a defendant company to register.
Who Must Register
The registration requirement of §302.101 applies to a "seller," defined as "a person who makes a telephone solicitation on the person's own behalf." Thus, the statute appears to apply directly to companies soliciting for their own products or services, not to third-party telemarketers acting as agents for others, though this distinction has generated some litigation.
Any seller meeting the definition must register each business location from which solicitations are made. A $200 annual filing fee is required per location, and the seller must provide and maintain a $10,000 surety bond or equivalent security.
While some types of organizations are exempt from registration, each exemption is fact-specific, and several involve terms that the statute does not define, necessitating case-by-case legal analysis.
The Bottom Line
The Texas solicitor registration regime, once a niche compliance obligation, has become a central driver of telemarketing risk in the state, particularly after SB 140 expanded its reach to text messaging and enhanced private remedies.
By treating each unregistered call or text as a separate violation and layering DTPA exposure on top of federal TCPA claims, Texas courts have enabled damage awards that can quickly eclipse federal liability and threaten the viability of unwary marketers. In this environment, the relatively modest cost of registration and bonding is dwarfed by the downside of noncompliance, making proactive registration, exemption analysis, and ongoing monitoring an essential component of any marketing program that touches Texas consumers.
