Are Text Messages Admissible in Court in Texas?

Yes, text messages are admissible in court in Texas, but only if the party offering them clears three hurdles: the messages are relevant to a disputed fact, they are authenticated as actually having been sent by the person claimed to have sent them, and they either fit a hearsay exception or are not hearsay in the first place. A fourth consideration sits alongside those three: the texts must have been obtained legally, because evidence gathered in violation of Texas or federal law can be suppressed. Get those pieces right and the jury sees the messages. Miss one and a judge keeps them out.

Relevance Comes First

Under Texas Rule of Evidence 401, a text is relevant if it makes any fact that matters to the case more or less probable than it would be without the message.¹ A message where someone admits running a red light is plainly relevant in a car accident case. A text about weekend plans usually is not, unless it ties to a disputed fact like where someone was at a specific time.

Relevance alone doesn’t guarantee admission. Rule 403 lets a judge exclude evidence when its probative value is substantially outweighed by unfair prejudice, confusion, or the risk of misleading the jury.¹ Messages that are technically relevant but mainly embarrassing or inflammatory often get excluded on this ground.

Authentication Is Where Texts Usually Live or Die

This is the part most people underestimate. Texas Rule of Evidence 901(a) requires the party offering the text to produce evidence sufficient to support a finding that the message is what they claim it is. In practice, you have to show that a specific person actually typed and sent it.¹

A screenshot from a phone number tied to someone is not enough on its own. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has held that proving a message came from a number assigned to a particular person does not by itself establish that the person sent the message. Phones get borrowed, stolen, or shared. Something more is needed.

Linking the Message to the Sender

Rule 901(b)(4) is the workhorse. It allows the content and circumstances of a message to establish identity: distinctive wording, references to events only the sender would know, nicknames, and internal patterns of speech all count.¹ A text that mentions a private conversation only two people had, or references a specific unpublicized dollar figure, pulls weight here.

Two other common paths: Rule 901(b)(1) allows testimony from a witness who took part in or saw the conversation, and Rule 901(b)(9) covers evidence about the messaging system itself producing accurate results. Experienced lawyers combine these. A witness testifies she texted the defendant at his known number, the messages reference events only the defendant would know, the timestamps match his known location, and the writing style matches other texts he admits sending. Layered connections win admission.

Screenshots and Copies

Texas Rule 1001(a) treats any printout or sight-readable output of electronically stored information as an original, as long as it accurately reflects the data.¹ A screenshot qualifies. Rule 1003 adds that a duplicate is admissible to the same extent as the original unless a genuine question is raised about authenticity or admitting the copy would be unfair. If the other side argues the image was edited or cropped out of context, expect the court to demand stronger proof.

The Hearsay Problem and the Exceptions That Fix It

A text is an out-of-court statement. Offered to prove the truth of what it says, it is hearsay, and hearsay is generally inadmissible. Several exceptions do most of the real work.

Statements by the Opposing Party

Rule 801(e)(2) is the cleanest route. A statement offered against an opposing party is not hearsay at all when the party made it personally, adopted it as true, authorized it, or made it as a co-conspirator during the conspiracy.¹ If the other side texted “I never paid that invoice” and you’re suing for breach of contract, that message comes in against them with no hearsay issue. This exception handles the majority of civil and criminal cases involving texts.

Present Sense Impressions and Excited Utterances

Rule 803(1) covers statements describing an event made while the speaker was perceiving it or immediately after. Rule 803(2) covers statements about a startling event made while the speaker was still under its stress.¹ A text sent moments after a crash saying “he just blew through the stop sign” can qualify under either rule. Timing drives these exceptions, and opposing counsel will measure the gap between the event and the message closely.

Business Records

Rule 803(6) covers records made at or near the time of an event, kept in the course of a regularly conducted business activity, created as a regular practice, and authenticated by a custodian or qualified witness.¹ A property manager who routinely texts tenants about maintenance and keeps those exchanges on file may get them in under this exception. Casual one-off texts between coworkers are much harder because there is no regular business practice of keeping them.

How You Got the Texts Can Sink Them

Even relevant, authenticated, non-hearsay texts get thrown out if they were obtained illegally. Texas is strict on this, and the consequences reach beyond losing the evidence.

One-Party Consent

Texas follows a one-party consent rule for electronic communications. Under Texas Penal Code Section 16.02, intercepting an electronic communication is a crime, but there is an affirmative defense when the person intercepting is a party to the communication or when one party gave prior consent.² In plain terms: if you were part of the conversation, you can save and use the messages without the other person’s permission. If you broke into someone else’s phone or cloud account to read texts you were never part of, you committed a crime and the evidence will not come in.

The Texas Exclusionary Rule

Article 38.23 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure bars the use of any evidence obtained in violation of the Texas or U.S. Constitution or any state or federal law in a criminal trial.³ If the jury has a reasonable doubt that evidence was obtained illegally, the judge must instruct them to disregard it. A narrow good-faith exception applies to officers acting on a warrant issued by a neutral magistrate. In civil cases, illegally obtained texts can be suppressed and can expose the person who took them to separate liability for invasion of privacy.

Warrants for Cell Phone Searches

Police generally cannot scroll through a suspect’s phone after an arrest. The U.S. Supreme Court held in Riley v. California that officers typically need a warrant before searching digital information on a cell phone seized incident to arrest.⁴ That rule applies in Texas, and texts found through a warrantless phone search will almost certainly be suppressed under both the Fourth Amendment and Article 38.23.

Deleting Texts Once a Lawsuit Is Foreseeable

Wiping messages after you know, or should know, that litigation is coming is one of the fastest ways to wreck your own case. Texas calls this spoliation.

The Texas Supreme Court set out the framework in Brookshire Brothers v. Aldridge. A court must find that the party had a duty to preserve evidence and intentionally or negligently breached it. The duty to preserve kicks in when there is a substantial chance a claim will be filed and the evidence will be material.⁵ A demand letter, a formal complaint, or a credible verbal threat of suit can all trigger it.

Once that duty exists, you have to take reasonable steps to preserve the data, including turning off automatic deletion settings on phones and messaging apps. Sanctions are keyed to culpability and prejudice. Negligent destruction may draw an instruction simply telling the jury that evidence was lost. Intentional destruction can produce a spoliation instruction allowing the jury to presume the deleted messages would have been unfavorable to the person who destroyed them.⁵ That instruction is often case-ending in practice, even though the jury isn’t required to draw the inference.

If the Messages Are Already Gone

Deleted doesn’t always mean lost. When a text is deleted, the phone usually marks that storage space as available rather than immediately wiping it. Until new data overwrites that space, forensic tools can often recover the content, along with metadata like timestamps, edit history, and deletion records that help show whether a conversation was tampered with. Examiners create a forensic image of the device, verified through cryptographic hashing, which is what gives recovered data credibility in court. Time matters: the longer the phone stays in active use after deletion, the lower the chance of recovery. Preserving the device quickly is the single biggest factor. Costs vary with device, data volume, and complexity, but budgeting several thousand dollars for a thorough examination is realistic.

Carriers are usually a dead end for message content. Under the Stored Communications Act, the government can compel disclosure of the contents of stored electronic communications only through a warrant, a court order supported by specific and articulable facts, or an administrative subpoena with prior notice, depending on how long the content has been stored and where.⁶ Providers are otherwise generally barred from voluntarily disclosing content, with narrow exceptions like emergencies involving danger of death or serious physical injury.⁷ Beyond the legal process, most carriers do not store the actual text of SMS messages for long. Metadata about who texted whom and when is usually kept much longer than content. For the actual words in the messages, devices and cloud backups are typically more productive than subpoenas to the carrier.

Preserving Texts the Right Way

A few habits make the difference between texts that reach the jury and texts a judge keeps out:

Screenshot the full thread, not isolated messages. Include the contact name or number, dates, and timestamps. Cherry-picked excerpts invite authentication fights.
Turn on cloud backups for your messaging apps. If the phone breaks, gets stolen, or is wiped, a second copy exists.
Don’t edit, crop, or annotate the images. Altered screenshots create authentication problems and can look like tampering.
If a lawsuit is foreseeable, stop any automatic cleanup, avoid factory resets, and consider airplane mode if there is any risk of a remote wipe.
Have someone else view the original messages on your phone. A witness who later testifies about what they saw gives you Rule 901(b)(1) authentication without relying on screenshots alone.

Texts are powerful because people write things in messages they would never say under oath. Whether they come into evidence almost never turns on relevance. It turns on whether the person offering them laid the authentication foundation, found a hearsay exception, and obtained the messages without breaking any laws.

1
Texas Judicial Branch. Texas Rules of Evidence Effective September 1, 2025
2
State of Texas. Texas Penal Code Section 16.02 – Unlawful Interception, Use, or Disclosure of Wire, Oral, or Electronic Communications
3
State of Texas. Texas Code of Criminal Procedure CRIM P Art 38.23
4
Justia U.S. Supreme Court. Riley v California, 573 US 373 (2014)
5
Justia Law. Brookshire Bros Ltd v Aldridge – Texas Supreme Court 2014
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2703 – Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2702 – Voluntary Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records