Text Message Harassment Laws in Maryland: Penalties, Peace Orders, and Defenses

Under Maryland’s text message harassment laws, repeatedly texting someone with the intent to harass or alarm them, after being told to stop and without a legal reason for the contact, is a misdemeanor under Criminal Law Section 3-805 that carries up to three years in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.¹ If you are the one being harassed, you do not have to wait for a criminal case to get relief; you can petition a District Court for a peace order that bars the sender from contacting you.

When Harassing Texts Become a Crime

Not every unwanted message is criminal. For an adult victim, subsection (b)(1) of Section 3-805 requires the state to prove each of the following:

The sender acted maliciously.
The sender engaged in a course of conduct through electronic communication that alarmed or seriously annoyed the recipient.
The sender intended to harass or alarm the recipient.
The sender continued after receiving a reasonable warning or request to stop.
The sender acted without a legal purpose.¹

Three of those elements do most of the work in practice. “Course of conduct” means a pattern, so a single angry message to an adult generally will not sustain a charge under (b)(1). The warning requirement means the sender has to be told to stop before continued texting becomes criminal, and that warning can come from the recipient or from someone acting on their behalf. The “without a legal purpose” element pulls out contact that is tied to legitimate business, a legal dispute, or similar lawful activity, even when the recipient finds it annoying.

The statute’s definition of electronic communication is broad enough to reach text messages, email, instant messaging, social media messages, and other internet-based tools.¹

Stricter Rules When the Target Is a Minor

Subsection (b)(4) sets a lower threshold when the recipient is a child. A single message can trigger the statute if it was sent after a warning to stop, was sent with a reasonable expectation that the recipient would share it with others, or is extreme enough to shock the conscience.² The sender must have intended to intimidate or harass the child and intended to cause physical injury or serious emotional distress, and the conduct must have had that effect. This provision is aimed at cyberbullying, where one devastating message can cause real harm without a prolonged campaign.

Penalties on Conviction

A violation of Section 3-805 is a misdemeanor. The standard maximum is three years in jail, a fine of up to $10,000, or both.¹ Actual sentences depend on the severity and length of the harassment, the sender’s record, and the impact on the victim. Judges can impose probation, community service, or counseling in place of or alongside incarceration.

Subsection (b)(6) creates an aggravated tier for certain conduct that carries up to ten years in prison and the same $10,000 fine.¹

Getting a Peace Order to Stop the Texts

You do not need an arrest or a criminal charge to get the contact to stop. Misuse of electronic communication under Section 3-805 is a listed basis for a Maryland peace order.³ A peace order is a civil court order directing the respondent to stay away and stop contacting you.

Peace Order or Protective Order?

Maryland has two kinds of civil protection orders. Protective orders cover people in domestic relationships, including spouses, former spouses, relatives, cohabitants, and people who share a child. Peace orders cover everyone else: coworkers, neighbors, acquaintances, exes you never lived with, strangers. If the person texting you is not in that domestic category, the peace order is your route.

How to File

Use the Petition for Peace Order (form DC-PO-001) along with the required addendum and supplement forms, available from any District Court clerk or online. The act you are reporting must have happened within the previous 30 days.⁴

During court hours, file with the District Court clerk. After hours, go to a District Court Commissioner’s office, which operates 24 hours a day. The commissioner can issue an interim order on the spot if the situation calls for immediate protection.⁴

A temporary peace order typically follows quickly, and a final hearing must be held no later than seven days after the respondent is served with the temporary order. If the judge grants a final peace order at that hearing, it can last up to six months.⁵ Fee waivers are available if you cannot afford the filing cost.

Preserve the Messages and Report

Evidence decides these cases. Before anything else, lock down the texts:

Screenshot each message with the sender’s phone number, date, and time, and capture the full thread so context is visible, not just isolated lines.
Do not delete anything, including your own responses. Prosecutors and judges want to see the full exchange.
Back up the screenshots somewhere other than your phone, by emailing them to yourself or saving them to cloud storage.
Send your warning to stop in writing by text, and keep a copy. The adult provision requires that warning, so you need proof it happened.

Avoid anything that alters the original messages, such as editing the thread or restoring the phone from a backup. Keeping the original device intact matters if law enforcement later needs to authenticate the data.⁶

File a report with your local police department. Call 911 if the harassment includes threats of violence or an immediate safety concern. You can also forward spam-type messages to 7726 to help your carrier identify and block the number.⁷

Defenses a Sender Can Raise

Because Section 3-805 stacks several requirements, a defendant can defeat the charge by knocking out any one of them. The most common challenge is intent: if the messages were not sent to harass or alarm, the charge fails. A heated back-and-forth where both sides participated voluntarily often undercuts a harassment claim because mutual engagement makes it harder to show one side was maliciously targeting the other.¹

Defendants also attack the warning element. If no one told the sender to stop before the contact continued, the (b)(1) case is missing a required piece. A “legal purpose” argument can defeat the charge too, as with messages tied to a custody discussion or a business dispute.

The statute explicitly exempts peaceable activity intended to express a political view or provide information, and peaceable activity conducted for a lawful purpose.¹ Repeat political or community-organizing messages that annoy a recipient can fall inside this exception.

First Amendment limits also apply. In Counterman v. Colorado (2023), the U.S. Supreme Court held that criminal prosecution for threatening speech requires at least a showing of recklessness, meaning the state must prove the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that the communications would be viewed as threatening violence.⁸

Finally, defendants can attack the texts themselves. Maryland’s highest court held in Griffin v. State that electronic communications pose authentication problems because accounts can be faked, devices can be accessed by others, and screenshots can be fabricated. Prosecutors must do more than hand up a printout; they need evidence that the defendant actually sent the messages, such as witness testimony, carrier records, or device forensics.⁹

When Federal Law Also Applies

Maryland’s statute is not the only one in play. The federal cyberstalking law, 18 U.S.C. Section 2261A, reaches anyone who uses an electronic communication service with intent to harass or intimidate and whose conduct either puts the victim in reasonable fear of serious bodily injury or causes substantial emotional distress. Because the law requires use of interstate commerce, it applies to essentially any text or internet-based message sent across state lines.¹⁰

A separate federal statute, 47 U.S.C. Section 223, makes it a crime to use a telecommunications device with intent to harass a specific person, with a maximum of two years in federal prison. When the victim is a minor and the communication involves intimate imagery, the maximum rises to three years.¹¹

Most text harassment cases are prosecuted at the state level. Federal prosecutors tend to step in when threats cross state lines, when the conduct is severe, or when state charges would be inadequate. The point for a Maryland victim: a harasser cannot escape prosecution simply by texting from another state.

1
Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Criminal Law Code Section 3-805 – Misuse of Electronic Communication or Interactive Computer Service
2
Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Criminal Law Code 3-805
3
Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings Code Section 3-8A-19.1
4
Maryland Courts. Domestic Violence – Peace Orders
5
Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings Code 3-1505
6
National Institute of Standards and Technology. Digital Evidence Preservation – Considerations for Evidence Handlers
7
Federal Trade Commission. How to Recognize and Report Spam Text Messages
8
Supreme Court of the United States. Counterman v. Colorado, No. 22-138
9
Maryland Courts. Antoine Levar Griffin v. State of Maryland, No. 74, September Term 2010
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 2261A – Stalking
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 USC 223 – Obscene or Harassing Telephone Calls in the District of Columbia or in Interstate or Foreign Communications