2025 Texas sessionsRegular and both called sessions have ended. This index covers House and Senate bills, not resolutions. Statuses come from official reports.

2025 · Regular session · House bill

HB1306

HB1306 extends specified protections to justices of the peace, county death investigators employed under Code of Criminal Procedure Article 49.23, and medical examiners or office employees employed under Article 49.25, Section 3.

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Official caption: Relating to certain claims for benefits or compensation by a death investigation professional.

Signed by governorSource-checked explanation published

Official report lists House author(s): Landgraf, Holt. This does not identify sponsors or amendment drafters.

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Bill explanation published · Version and amendment review scope is stated below · Individual amendment records may not be separately annotated.

Bill highlights

Selected points from the published explanation. Follow each point to its source-linked context; conditions and limits may matter.

HB1306 extends specified protections to justices of the peace, county death investigators employed under Code of Criminal Procedure Article 49.23, and medical examiners or office employees employed under Article 49.25, Section 3.
Exposure prevention: The county served must reimburse reasonable preventive-treatment expenses when a covered professional is exposed to a contagious disease while conducting or assisting in an inquest, the disease is not an “ordinary disease of life” in the workers' compensation sense, and the exposure requires preventive treatment.
Survivor assistance: The act adds these professionals to the occupations covered by Government Code Chapter 615.
Serious injuries: A new workers' compensation provision requires the county, Division of Workers' Compensation and insurer to accelerate and prioritize medical-benefit claims for serious bodily injury sustained in the course and scope of employment.

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What does it do?

HB1306 extends specified protections to justices of the peace, county death investigators employed under Code of Criminal Procedure Article 49.23, and medical examiners or office employees employed under Article 49.25, Section 3. Effective September 1, 2025, it applies to benefits or compensation claims pending on that date or filed afterward; earlier claims no longer pending remain under prior law. Final law

Exposure prevention: The county served must reimburse reasonable preventive-treatment expenses when a covered professional is exposed to a contagious disease while conducting or assisting in an inquest, the disease is not an “ordinary disease of life” in the workers’ compensation sense, and the exposure requires preventive treatment. The professional may choose the treating physician and is entitled to preventive immunization against diseases potentially encountered during that work when immunization is possible. An inquest investigates a death’s cause and circumstances; it is not limited to a formal court hearing. Government Code 607 · Inquest and employment provisions

Survivor assistance: The act adds these professionals to the occupations covered by Government Code Chapter 615. Eligible survivors of a qualifying line-of-duty death can receive its general financial assistance, including an inflation-adjusted lump sum and applicable minor-child payments. Existing eligibility and claim-review requirements still apply. This addition does not automatically extend benefits that other sections reserve to narrower occupation lists, such as certain survivor health-insurance and additional peace-officer benefits. Chapter 615, especially 615.021–.023, .041, .071 and .121

Serious injuries: A new workers’ compensation provision requires the county, Division of Workers’ Compensation and insurer to accelerate and prioritize medical-benefit claims for serious bodily injury sustained in the course and scope of employment. It also accelerates specified disputes or appeals over denied medical benefits; the professional must notify the division and independent review organization of the professional’s status. “Serious bodily injury” is the defined category involving substantial risk of death, death, serious permanent disfigurement, or prolonged loss or impairment of a bodily member or organ. This is faster handling, not guaranteed approval of every injury claim. The act also adds compliance with this expedited process to factors considered in certain insurer administrative-penalty decisions. Labor Code 504 · Penal Code 1.07

What changed along the way?

The introduced bill used a broader description of coroners, medical examiners and death investigators employed by political subdivisions. The House committee substitute replaced it with the specific Texas offices and statutory employment categories, tied disease-exposure protection to inquest work, and expressly assigned reimbursement to the county served. Both earlier versions proposed adding these workers to an existing first-responder expedited-benefits provision. Introduced · House substitute

Representative Brooks Landgraf’s sole indexed amendment, adopted May 9, replaced that approach with a separate expedited-benefits section for death-investigation professionals and added the insurer-penalty cross-reference. Those changes survive in the engrossed, Senate committee and enrolled texts, which match in their operative provisions. The act also updates an obsolete agency name to the Health and Human Services Commission. Governor Abbott signed it June 20, 2025; final votes were House 130–0, with one present but not voting, and Senate 31–0. Amendment · Amendment index · Engrossed · Senate committee · Versions · History

For the full amendment record, open the official amendment index.

Official bill versions

Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.

Who could benefit—and who could bear the costs?

Covered professionals gain help with occupational disease prevention and faster handling of qualifying serious-injury medical claims; eligible families gain access to general survivor assistance. Counties bear qualifying prevention expenses, insurers and the division have priority-processing duties, and the state bears eligible survivor payments. The law does not make every illness work-related or add these professionals to all disease presumptions available to other occupations.

All three Legislative Budget Board notes say state and local fiscal effects cannot be determined, because affected survivor counts and county medical expenses are unknown. They cite $611,135 for a qualifying death occurring in fiscal year 2025 as that year’s inflation-adjusted lump-sum benefit—not a new flat award, current-year quote or total cost of this bill. The amount changes annually and depends on the death date. No quantified two-year/five-year total or new appropriation appears in HB1306. Introduced note · Revised House-substitute note · Engrossed note

Official sources

Catalog report retrieved 2026-10-25. Check the official record for corrections or later changes.