A text message that says we need to talk about the kids. Driving to her mother’s house to pick up your tools. Answering the phone at eleven at night because she is the one who called you. Every one of those can be a separate criminal charge under Texas Penal Code Section 25.07, and the fact that she reached out first does not cancel it out.
If you have been arrested for violating a protective order, a magistrate’s emergency protective order, or a condition of your bond in a family violence case, call Blass Law at (713) 664-4000. This charge lands on top of a case you already have, and it changes that case immediately.
What Texas counts as a violation
Section 25.07 spells out the conduct. You commit an offense if, while an order or a bond condition is in place, you knowingly or intentionally do any of this:
- Commit family violence, or an act in furtherance of trafficking, sexual assault, indecent assault, aggravated sexual assault, or stalking
- Communicate directly with a protected person or a member of the household in a threatening or harassing manner, send a threat through somebody else, or communicate in any manner at all if the order bars all communication
- Go to or near a residence, workplace, business, child care facility, or school that the order specifically describes
- Possess a firearm
- Harm, threaten, or interfere with the care of a pet, companion animal, or assistance animal the protected person keeps
- Remove or tamper with a GPS monitoring device
- Track or monitor the protected person’s property or vehicle without consent, including with a tracking app on a phone or a tracking device, or by following her or having somebody else follow her
That last one was added to the statute in 2023, and it reaches the location-sharing app you put on her phone back when you were together and never turned off. When you set it up does not matter. The offense is the tracking that is still happening now.
Read your order before you do anything else. Two things in it decide most of these cases. First, whether it bars all contact or only threatening and harassing contact, because those are very different orders and people assume they have the second one when they have the first. Second, which addresses it actually lists, since the statute only reaches places the order specifically describes.
Answering her call is still a violation
Section 25.07(d) says reconciliation between the two of you does not affect the validity of the order or an officer’s duty to enforce it. Subsection (e) says an officer cannot arrest the protected person for violating her own order. Put those two together and you get the trap in this statute. She can call, text, come to your door, and ask you to come home, and none of it is a crime for her. All of it is a crime for you.
The State does not need her to press charges either. Phone records and a screenshot are enough to file a case. After it is filed, her change of heart is something a prosecutor weighs, not a switch she can flip.
There is one lawful channel, and the statute names it: communication through your attorney or through a person the court appoints. A message passed through your mother, your brother, or a mutual friend is not that channel. That is the offense.
Which orders this applies to
More orders than most people realize. Section 25.07 covers conditions of bond set in a family violence, sexual assault or abuse, indecent assault, stalking, or trafficking case. It covers a magistrate’s order for emergency protection under Article 17.292 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which is the one handed to you at the jail, often in a stack of paper at three in the morning before you have talked to anybody. It covers protective orders under Subchapter A, Chapter 7B of the Code of Criminal Procedure, orders in a divorce under Section 6.504 of the Family Code, temporary ex parte orders under Chapter 83, final protective orders under Chapter 85, orders in a CPS case under Chapter 261, and an out-of-state order enforced here under Chapter 88.
A temporary ex parte order only counts if it was served on you. That is written into the statute, and it is worth checking in every case, because service is a fact the State has to prove and paperwork gets sloppy.
The punishment went up on September 1, 2025
House Bill 2073 rewrote the penalty subsection last session. Section 25.07(g) now reads:
An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor, except the offense is: (1) subject to Subdivision (2), a state jail felony if: (A) it is shown at the trial of the offense that the defendant violated an order issued under Subchapter A, Chapter 7B, Code of Criminal Procedure, following the defendant’s conviction of or placement on deferred adjudication community supervision for an offense, if the order was issued with respect to a victim of that offense; or (B) the defendant violates an order or a condition of bond in the manner described by Subsection (a)(1), (2), (3), (5), (6), or (7) while possessing a deadly weapon; or (2) a felony of the third degree if it is shown on the trial of the offense that the defendant: (A) has previously been convicted two or more times of an offense under this section or two or more times of an offense under Section 25.072, or has previously been convicted of an offense under this section and an offense under Section 25.072; or (B) has violated the order or the condition of bond by committing an assault or the offense of stalking.
In plain terms, the baseline is a Class A misdemeanor, up to a year in the county jail and a fine up to $4,000. The new language in (g)(1)(B) is the part that catches people. If you had a deadly weapon on you while you violated the order, the charge becomes a state jail felony, 180 days to two years and a fine up to $10,000, even on a first violation. A gun is the obvious deadly weapon, but Texas defines the term to cover anything that in the manner of its use or intended use is capable of causing death or serious bodily injury. That is how a folding knife clipped inside your pocket turns a misdemeanor into a felony.
It becomes a third degree felony, two to ten years in prison, if you have two prior convictions under this statute or its repeat-offense companion, or if the violation itself was an assault or stalking.
Two or more violations inside a twelve month window is its own offense under Section 25.072, and that one is a third degree felony. The same 2025 bill raised it to a second degree felony, two to twenty years, if at least one of those violations was the deadly weapon version. Prosecutors like that statute because the jury does not have to agree on which specific incidents happened, only that two or more did.
You can be held with no bail at all
Article 17.152 of the Code of Criminal Procedure lets a judge deny release entirely on a 25.07 charge. After a hearing, if the judge finds by a preponderance of the evidence that you committed the offense, you can sit. You have to be brought before a magistrate within 48 hours of arrest for that determination.
One useful limit sits inside that statute. If the alleged violation is the going-near-a-place kind, bail can only be denied if the judge finds you went there intending to commit or threaten family violence or stalking. Showing up somewhere is not enough by itself. That hearing happens in the first two days, which is the window where having a lawyer already involved matters most.
Expect your existing bond to be attacked at the same time. A motion to revoke, a request for a GPS monitor, and tighter conditions all follow a new 25.07 filing, and the new case becomes evidence the State will use in the old one. If you are fighting an assault on a family member charge, a protective order violation can do more damage to that case than to this one.
The gun question
Possessing a firearm while an order is in place is a violation of the order itself under Section 25.07(a)(4). It is also a separate Class A misdemeanor under Penal Code Section 46.04(c), which makes it an offense to possess a firearm after receiving notice of a qualifying protective order and before it expires. Those are two charges out of one gun, and the second one has nothing to do with whether you ever contacted the protected person. If you own firearms and an order has been served on you, deal with that first, and do it through a lawyer rather than by handing them to a friend.
How we defend these cases
Start with notice. The statute requires that you acted knowingly or intentionally, which means the State has to prove you knew what the order said. Emergency protection orders get handed out at magistration with everything else, and a person who was booked at four in the morning and released that afternoon often has no idea an order exists, let alone what is in it. We pull the service records and the magistrate’s paperwork in every one of these.
Then the order’s own words. The going-near provision reaches places the order specifically describes. If the address is not in the order, the State has a real problem. If the order bars harassing communication rather than all communication, a neutral text about a pickup time is not the offense the State charged.
Then whether it was you. Two people who spent years sharing a family phone plan, an Apple account, and an email login leave a mess behind them. A message that came from your old account is not proof that you sent it, and a number on a call log is not a voice.
If there’s a deadly weapon allegation, that’s the fight worth having, because it moves the case from a misdemeanor to a felony. And if the protected person really wants the order changed, that’s done properly, with a motion to modify or dissolve in the court that issued it. It’s never done with a phone call, and the call itself is a new charge.
We also look at what happens after. A dismissal or an acquittal can open the door to clearing the arrest off your record, which matters because a family violence entry on a background check costs people apartments and jobs for years.
Talk to a Houston protective order violation lawyer
These cases are won early, in the days between the arrest and the bond hearing, and they are lost by people who try to explain themselves to the complainant instead of to a lawyer. Jay Blass Cohen has defended people in Harris County courts since 2009, and Blass Law has never worked for the other side.
Call (713) 664-4000 or reach us through our contact page for a free and confidential consultation. Our office is at 917 Franklin St, Suite 400, in downtown Houston, a short walk from the criminal courthouse.
Frequently asked questions
Can I be charged if she contacted me first?
Yes. Section 25.07(d) says reconciliation does not affect the validity of the order, and Section 25.07(e) bars officers from arresting the protected person for violating her own order. Her contacting you is not a crime for her and does not make your response lawful.
Is violating a protective order a felony in Texas?
Usually it is a Class A misdemeanor. It becomes a state jail felony if you violated while possessing a deadly weapon, or if you violated a Chapter 7B order issued for the victim of an offense you were convicted of or took deferred adjudication on. It becomes a third degree felony with two prior convictions, or if the violation was an assault or stalking.
What if I never knew about the order?
The State has to prove you acted knowingly or intentionally, and a temporary ex parte order under Chapter 83 of the Family Code only applies once it has been served on you. Notice is one of the first things we investigate.
Can the protected person drop the protective order?
Not by deciding to. The order stays in force until the court that issued it changes or dissolves it, which takes a motion filed in that court. Until that happens, every contact is still an offense for you.
Do I have to give up my guns?
Possessing a firearm while an order is in effect violates the order under Section 25.07(a)(4), and Penal Code Section 46.04(c) makes it a separate Class A misdemeanor to possess a firearm after receiving notice of a qualifying order. Talk to a lawyer about how to handle the firearms you own before you move them anywhere.