The age of consent in Texas is 17. Under the Penal Code, a person younger than 17 can’t legally consent to sexual contact, and it doesn’t matter whether the older person knew the younger person’s age or whether the younger person agreed. That rule comes from the sexual assault statute, § 22.011, and the indecency with a child statute, § 21.11, which both define a child as someone younger than 17. But 17 isn’t the end of it. Laws covering photos and videos use 18, and a school employee can be charged over a relationship with a student of any age.
If you’ve been accused of an offense involving someone under 17, or a detective has called asking you to come talk, call (713) 664-4000 first. These are among the most serious charges in the Penal Code, and what you say before you have a lawyer is often what the case gets built on.
What the law says at each age
| Younger person’s age | What Texas law says | Close-in-age defense? |
|---|---|---|
| Under 14 | Penetration or oral or genital contact is aggravated sexual assault, a first-degree felony, § 22.021. Other sexual touching is indecency with a child, § 21.11. Consent and a mistake about age don’t matter. | No for sexual assault. The indecency defense has no minimum age, but it rarely fits a child this young. |
| 14, 15 or 16 | Sexual assault of a child, a second-degree felony, § 22.011(a)(2), or indecency with a child, a second- or third-degree felony, § 21.11 | Yes, if the older person is no more than three years older and meets the other conditions |
| 17 | Can consent under the sexual assault and indecency statutes, but is still a minor for photos and videos, §§ 43.25, 43.26 | Not needed for consent |
| Any age, if a student | A school employee’s sexual contact with a student is a second-degree felony, § 21.12 | Only for a spouse, or when the employee is no more than three years older and the relationship started before the job |
Sources: Penal Code §§ 21.11, 21.12, 22.011, 22.021, 43.25 and 43.26.
The close-in-age defense
What people call the Texas “Romeo and Juliet law” is an affirmative defense in § 22.011(e) and a similar one in § 21.11(b). For sexual assault, it applies when the accused was no more than three years older than the complainant, the complainant was at least 14, the accused wasn’t already a lifetime registrant or someone with a prior conviction or deferred adjudication for sexual assault, and the accused wasn’t barred from marrying the complainant under the bigamy statute or from sexual contact with them under the incest statute. The indecency version, § 21.11(b), also requires that there was no force, duress or threat, and as written it applies only to opposite-sex couples. Unlike the sexual assault version, it has no minimum age for the younger person.
Two things about it trip people up. It’s a defense, not a rule that makes the conduct legal. You can still be arrested and charged, and at trial it’s your burden to prove it by a preponderance of the evidence, under Penal Code § 2.04(d). And the three-year line gets measured by actual birthdates, so a 19-year-old and a 16-year-old can land on either side of it. Our page on the Romeo and Juliet law in Texas covers who qualifies.
The two-year rule you may have read about is a different law. Section 43.261(e) gives a defense to teenagers who share sexual images with each other when they’re dating and no more than two years apart. It has nothing to do with the age of consent for sexual contact.
Why 17 isn’t always the safe line
A 17-year-old can consent to sex under the Penal Code, and a relationship between a 17-year-old and a 20-year-old isn’t a sex crime on that basis alone. But the same 17-year-old is a minor under §§ 43.25 and 43.26, which cover sexual images and videos of anyone younger than 18. A photo or video between two people who can lawfully be together can still be a serious felony. The sexual performance statute has its own two-year defense, § 43.25(f)(3), but the possession and promotion statute, § 43.26, doesn’t. That’s the charge we see come out of cases where everyone assumed they were within the law.
School employees are the other exception. Section 21.12 makes sexual contact between a school employee and a student at that school a second-degree felony no matter how old the student is, including an 18-year-old senior.
What’s at stake
Sexual assault of a child is a second-degree felony with 2 to 20 years in prison. Aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14 is first-degree, with a 25-year minimum in some cases and no parole when that minimum applies. Both carry lifetime sex offender registration when the accused was 17 or older, and deferred adjudication doesn’t avoid it. The narrow exception is Art. 62.301, which lets a court exempt someone no more than four years older than a complainant who was at least 15, when the case rests only on their ages. Our page on whether sexual assault is a felony in Texas goes through the probation, parole and registration rules.
There’s also no statute of limitations for sexual assault of a child or for indecency with a child, under Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 12.01(1). Accusations can come years later, often when a relationship ends or a parent finds old messages.
How these cases get defended
The first questions are the ones the statute cares about: how old each person really was on the date alleged, and whether the close-in-age defense applies. Birth dates and the timeline matter more here than in almost any other case, because a few months can decide which statute applies or whether the defense is available at all. After that, the evidence is usually the messages and the complainant’s forensic interview, and we go through all of it.
Accused of an age-of-consent offense in Houston? Call Blass Law
Jay Blass Cohen has defended serious felony cases in Houston since 2009 and has only ever worked on the defense side. Our Houston statutory rape lawyers handle these cases confidentially, including before charges are filed, when there’s still the most room to change how a case goes.
Call (713) 664-4000. Don’t talk to a detective or a CPS investigator until you’ve talked to us.
A Houston DWI and criminal defense attorney since 2009 who has never worked for the prosecution. Jay is an ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist, a certified practitioner and instructor of Standardized Field Sobriety Testing, a certified Drug Recognition Expert, and trained in forensic chromatography. He is a member of the National College for DUI Defense, a founding member of the DUI Defense Lawyers Association, and an appointee to the Texas Indigent Defense Commission by Gov. Abbott in 2024.
Last reviewed September 2026 · This article is legal information, not legal advice. Read Jay’s full bio →