HB3153

HB3153 adds screening, hiring and training safeguards for people who may have direct contact with children in specified facilities. It covers HHSC-regulated residential treatment facilities and group homes, Texas Juvenile Justice Department-regulated juvenile detention facilities, and homeless shelters operated by or under a county or city’s authority. The responsible state agency, county or city must ensure the facilities it regulates or operates perform the required checks. This is not a universal rule for every workplace or every private shelter. Final law.

The requirements reach selected applicants and current employees, volunteers and independent contractors whose positions potentially involve caring for, supervising, guiding, controlling or routinely interacting with a child receiving services. Facilities must review state criminal-history information and verify employment, contacting former employers listed in application materials to the extent possible. They must obtain electronic DPS arrest and conviction updates for covered continuing personnel.

A facility that submits each covered person’s name for a background and criminal-history check in accordance with Human Resources Code 42.056 and its rules is considered compliant with this screening section. That is a specified alternative compliance route—not permission to skip background screening, and not an exemption from the separate hiring and training provisions. HHSC may adopt implementing rules, including rules recognizing qualifying existing employment-verification procedures. Referenced background-check law.

A facility must not offer, and must terminate, a covered position when the specified review or verification reveals that the person engaged in child abuse constituting one of four listed Penal Code offenses: continuous sexual abuse, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault or prohibited sexual conduct. The operative test is discovery of the specified conduct, not simply any arrest or an unsupported allegation. Despite the section’s conviction-related heading, the operative text does not say that only a conviction can establish the disqualifying conduct.

Separation agreements entered into on or after September 1, 2025 cannot prohibit disclosure to a prospective employer of conduct constituting the listed offenses. Facilities must also train covered personnel to recognize abuse, understand reporting requirements and facility reporting policies, and maintain appropriate professional relationships with children. The act sets no specific number of training hours.

The governor signed June 20, 2025. The law took effect September 1, 2025. Official history.