The Texas plate reader bills that did not pass

Reviewed 26 July 2026

House Bill 2083, 89th Legislature

The most recent serious attempt. Filed 24 January 2025 by Representative John Bucy, referred to Homeland Security, Public Safety and Veterans' Affairs on 14 March, and dead on 2 June when the session ended. It never got a floor vote. Bill history at Texas Legislature Online.

Had it passed it would have added Chapter 732 to the Transportation Code, and it was not a light touch.

• Use limited to felony investigations, unregistered or uninsured vehicles, missing persons, stolen vehicle recovery, tolls and parking enforcement, and secured area access.
• A prohibition on operating the system in a way that intentionally or disproportionately targets people by race, ethnicity, or income level.
• A ban on providing captured plate data to non governmental entities or to the federal government.
• Destruction of captured plate data within 48 hours, absent an ongoing criminal investigation or a court order.
• Published rules governing use, and an annual report.
• Captured plate data treated as confidential.
• A private right of action, with statutory damages of $1,000 and recoverable attorney fees.

Its companion, House Bill 3999, was referred to committee and went no further. Similar bills were filed in the 84th Legislature in 2015 and also died.

What that pattern tells you

Two things, and they point in opposite directions.

First, a Texas agency currently has no statutory floor. That sounds like latitude and functions as exposure, for the reasons set out on the compliance page. There is no standard to point at when a council asks whether the program is lawful.

Second, a bill carrying a private right of action and a 48 hour destruction requirement has now been drafted more than once by more than one member. That is not a fringe proposal any more. It is a draft sitting in a drawer waiting for a session where the politics line up, and the current direction of public opinion on this technology is not moving in the direction agencies would prefer.

What an agency should take from it

Not panic, and not complacency either. The practical read is that the obligations in a future statute are broadly knowable today, because they have been written down twice.

Destruction of non matching reads on a short clock. No federal sharing by default. A stated purpose attached to use. Published policy and annual reporting. An agency already operating that way absorbs a statute without disruption. An agency that is not will be doing it under a deadline, in public, with a compliance date it did not choose.

Building toward that standard now costs very little. It is mostly policy and records discipline, and most of it is already required by the DPS agreement you signed.