HB742

HB742 requires covered first responders to complete approved training on identifying, assisting and reporting victims of human trafficking. The Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) sets the completion timing by rule. Its executive commissioner must approve courses, including at least one free option, publish and update the approved-course list, and consider courses offered by health care facilities. Final law

The new training provision covers public-safety employees whose duties include responding rapidly to emergencies, including covered fire-protection and emergency-medical-services personnel. It excludes volunteer emergency-services personnel, EMS volunteers, and peace or reserve law-enforcement officers performing law-enforcement duties. Those exclusions matter even though the law’s required workplace sign uses the broader phrase “all health care practitioners and first responders.” The sign’s wording does not eliminate the training provision’s express exclusions.

Hospital emergency departments and freestanding emergency medical care facilities must display the attorney general’s prescribed trafficking-information sign, at least 11 by 17 inches with at least 16-point type, where all employees can easily see it. Separate signs must be in English, Spanish and any other primary language spoken by at least 10 percent of the hospital’s or facility’s employees. The sign includes the required training and reporting-protection statements, trafficking indicators, reporting information, a reporting number designated by the attorney general and DPS contact information for suspicious activity.

Hospitals and freestanding emergency facilities may not discipline, retaliate against or otherwise discriminate against employees who in good faith report suspected human trafficking to the facility, law enforcement, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, the attorney general or another appropriate authority. The protection is not limited to reports that ultimately prove a crime occurred.

The law took effect September 1, 2025. HHSC must approve and post courses and adopt implementation rules, and the attorney general must design the sign, as soon as practicable afterward. The act does not itself give every responder a September 1 course-completion deadline; that timing is assigned to HHSC rules. Official history