Assault Under the Texas Penal Code: Charges, Penalties, Defenses

The Texas Penal Code treats assault under Chapter 22, with Section 22.01 defining the base offense and Section 22.02 covering the aggravated version. Punishment runs from a $500 fine for the lowest-level threat up to life in prison for the most serious first-degree felony conduct. Where a case lands depends on three things: what the defendant did, how badly the other person was hurt, and who that person was.

The Three Forms of Assault

Section 22.01 recognizes three ways to commit assault, and only one of them requires an actual injury.

The first is causing bodily injury to another person, whether intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly. “Bodily injury” means physical pain, illness, or any impairment of physical condition, so even minor pain that leaves no mark can qualify.¹

The second is threatening someone with imminent bodily injury. No punch has to land. Intentionally or knowingly making another person fear immediate harm is enough.²

The third is offensive or provocative contact: intentional touching the defendant knows (or should know) the other person will find offensive. Pain and injury are irrelevant. The contact itself is the violation — spitting, shoving to humiliate, that kind of act.²

Baseline Classification

Causing bodily injury starts as a Class A misdemeanor, the most serious misdemeanor level in Texas. Threatening imminent injury and making offensive contact both start as Class C misdemeanors, the lowest criminal offense in the state.²

Section 22.01(c) raises those Class C baselines in three situations:

Offensive or provocative contact against an elderly or disabled person becomes a Class A misdemeanor.
Threats or offensive contact against a referee, umpire, or other sports participant during or because of their duties becomes a Class B misdemeanor.
Offensive contact against a pregnant person intended to force an abortion becomes a Class A misdemeanor.

When Simple Assault Becomes a Felony

The identity of the victim can push a Class A misdemeanor assault up to a third-degree felony. Section 22.01(b) protects these categories:

Public servants performing official duties, or targeted in retaliation for official actions.
Emergency services personnel actively providing emergency services.
Security officers performing their duties, government-employed or contracted.
Process servers serving legal documents.
Hospital personnel on hospital property.
Pregnant individuals the defendant knows are pregnant, or any pregnant person when the assault is intended to force an abortion.
Employees providing services in correctional or juvenile facilities under government contracts.

Each enhancement requires that the defendant knew, or reasonably should have known, the victim’s status at the time.²

Family Violence Enhancements

Family violence cases carry some of the steepest enhancements in Chapter 22, and the consequences follow a defendant long after the sentence ends.

Prior Convictions

A first-time assault causing bodily injury to a family member, household member, or dating partner is still a Class A misdemeanor. It becomes a third-degree felony if the defendant has a prior conviction for violence against someone in one of those protected relationships, including convictions under the assault chapter, homicide statutes, kidnapping, sexual offenses, or violations of a protective order involving family violence.²

Strangulation

Choking or strangling a family member, household member, or dating partner is automatically a third-degree felony with no prior conviction needed. The statute covers any act that impedes normal breathing or blood circulation by applying pressure to the throat or neck, or by blocking the nose or mouth. The charge applies even without visible injuries.²

Continuous Violence Against the Family

Under Section 25.11, committing two or more assaults against a family member, household member, or dating partner within a 12-month period is a standalone third-degree felony. Prosecutors don’t need to prove the exact dates — only that at least two qualifying assaults happened inside that window.³

Aggravated Assault Under Section 22.02

Assault crosses into aggravated territory in two ways: causing serious bodily injury, or using or displaying a deadly weapon during the assault. Either one makes the offense a second-degree felony at minimum.⁴

“Serious bodily injury” is a higher bar than ordinary bodily injury. It means harm that creates a substantial risk of death, causes death, results in serious permanent disfigurement, or leads to long-term loss or impairment of a body part or organ.¹ The distinction between bodily injury and serious bodily injury is where many assault cases are won or lost.

A “deadly weapon” includes any firearm, anything designed to inflict death or serious injury, and anything capable of causing death or serious injury based on how it is used. That last category is broad: courts have found that cars, boots, and even hands can qualify depending on the circumstances.¹

First-Degree Aggravated Assault

Several circumstances push aggravated assault up to a first-degree felony:

Using a deadly weapon to cause serious bodily injury to a family member, household member, or dating partner.
Causing a traumatic brain or spinal injury that results in a persistent vegetative state or irreversible paralysis.
Aggravated assault committed by a public servant acting under color of office, against a public servant performing duties, or in retaliation against a witness or crime reporter.
Discharging a firearm from a motor vehicle at a building, home, or vehicle the shooter knows or should know is occupied, causing serious bodily injury.
Committing the assault as part of a mass shooting.

These are the circumstances the statute singles out for the highest felony level.⁴

Penalty Ranges by Offense Level

Texas sets the punishment range through the offense classification itself. Each level carries the following statutory maximum exposure:

Class C misdemeanor: fine up to $500, no jail time.⁵
Class B misdemeanor: up to 180 days in jail and a fine up to $2,000.
Class A misdemeanor: up to one year in jail and a fine up to $4,000.⁶
Third-degree felony: 2 to 10 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000.⁷
Second-degree felony: 2 to 20 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000.⁸
First-degree felony: 5 to 99 years in prison, or life, and a fine up to $10,000.⁹

Probation, deferred adjudication, and plea deals can change the actual outcome, but the ceiling stays the same. For felonies, “prison” means the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, not county jail.

Self-Defense and Other Defenses

Texas gives defendants real room to argue self-defense, and a narrower consent defense in specific situations.

Self-Defense

Under Section 9.31, force is justified when the defendant reasonably believes it is immediately necessary to protect against another person’s unlawful force. The response has to be proportional. A shove can meet a shove; a weapon cannot answer a slap.¹⁰

Texas is a stand-your-ground state. If the defendant has a right to be where they are, didn’t provoke the other person, and isn’t engaged in criminal activity beyond a traffic violation, there is no duty to retreat before using force.¹⁰

Self-defense has limits. It does not apply to responses based on words alone. It fails if the defendant provoked the confrontation, unless they clearly tried to walk away and the other person kept coming. And it does not justify resisting a lawful arrest.¹⁰

Deadly Force

Deadly force is justified only when the defendant reasonably believes it is immediately necessary to protect against another’s use or attempted use of deadly force, or to prevent kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, or robbery. Stand-your-ground applies here too.¹¹

The Castle Doctrine creates a presumption that the defendant’s belief was reasonable, forcing the prosecution to disprove it, when the other person was unlawfully and forcefully entering the defendant’s home, vehicle, or workplace, or trying to forcefully remove the defendant from one. The presumption applies only if the defendant didn’t provoke the encounter and wasn’t engaged in criminal activity at the time.¹¹

Consent

Under Section 22.06, the victim’s consent, or the defendant’s reasonable belief in consent, is a defense to assault and aggravated assault when the conduct didn’t threaten or cause serious bodily injury. It also covers conduct the victim knew was a risk of their occupation, a recognized medical treatment, or a scientific experiment. Consent is not a defense to offensive-contact assault. In practice it comes up most often in sports injuries and certain workplace incidents.¹²

Federal Firearm Ban After a Family Violence Conviction

Even a misdemeanor assault conviction involving family violence triggers a permanent federal firearm ban. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence cannot legally possess, purchase, or transport any firearm or ammunition.¹³

This is a federal prohibition, not a Texas one, and it applies regardless of when the conviction occurred. There is no exception for law enforcement officers or military personnel convicted of qualifying offenses. The ban lifts only if the conviction is expunged, set aside, or pardoned.

Clearing an Assault Charge From Your Record

If the case ends without a conviction — charges dismissed, defendant acquitted, or charges never formally filed — expunction is on the table. An expunction permanently erases the record, and the person is legally entitled to deny the arrest ever happened on job applications and elsewhere.

Deferred adjudication, where the judge withholds a final conviction after probation is completed, works differently. Class C misdemeanor deferred adjudications are eligible for expunction. For higher-level offenses that ended in deferred adjudication, a nondisclosure order may be available instead, sealing the record from public view while leaving it visible to law enforcement, licensing agencies, and certain government entities.

Family violence is the major carve-out. Anyone convicted of or placed on deferred adjudication for an offense involving family violence is ineligible for a nondisclosure order. That record stays visible on public background checks, which is one of the main reasons family violence charges carry such lasting weight even when the case resolves favorably.

1
State of Texas. Texas Penal Code 1.07 – Definitions
2
State of Texas. Texas Penal Code 22.01 – Assault
3
State of Texas. Texas Penal Code 25.11 – Continuous Violence Against the Family
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State of Texas. Texas Penal Code 22.02 – Aggravated Assault
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State of Texas. Texas Penal Code 12.23 – Class C Misdemeanor
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State of Texas. Texas Penal Code 12.21 – Class A Misdemeanor
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State of Texas. Texas Penal Code 12.34 – Third Degree Felony
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State of Texas. Texas Penal Code 12.33 – Second Degree Felony
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State of Texas. Texas Penal Code 12.32 – First Degree Felony
10
State of Texas. Texas Penal Code 9.31 – Self-Defense
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State of Texas. Texas Penal Code 9.32 – Deadly Force in Defense of Person
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State of Texas. Texas Penal Code Chapter 22 – Assaultive Offenses
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts