Texas Bills Explained

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

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2025 · Regular session · Senate bill

SB370

SB370 expands protection for specified personal information of attorney-general employees and their families, and adds current and former public-defender-office employees to protected categories.

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Official caption: Relating to the availability of certain personal information of a child, spouse, or surviving spouse of a current or former employee of the office of the attorney general or of a public defender's office.

Signed by governorSource-checked explanation published

Official report lists Senate author(s): Perry. 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.

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What does it do?

SB370 expands protection for specified personal information of attorney-general employees and their families, and adds current and former public-defender-office employees to protected categories. It was signed June 20, 2025 and took effect September 1, 2025. The changes apply to information requests received on or after that date, not only to records created afterward. Final law; Official history.

Previously, the attorney-general employee category in these provisions was limited to staff assigned to law-enforcement or child-support duties. SB370 removes that limitation and adds covered family members. It defines “family member” as a minor child, adult child, spouse or surviving spouse. Replacing the old borrowed definition removes its requirement that an adult child live in the person’s home and adds surviving spouses. The changed definition also operates wherever these amended sections already use that term, including specified judicial-family protections. Prior borrowed definition; Expanded categories and definitions.

The routes are different. Under Government Code 552.117, the covered information includes home address, home telephone number, emergency contacts, Social Security number and whether the person has family members; the new attorney-general and public-defender categories do not depend on the listed confidentiality elections. Under Section 552.1175, protection also covers date of birth, but the person must choose restricted access and notify the governmental body on its form with evidence of qualifying status. SB370 does not remove that election requirement. Existing election and protected-information rules.

SB370 separately makes information in a Section 552.1175 election form and its supporting submission confidential. Agencies may redact that material without first requesting an attorney-general decision, while the existing requester-notice and review procedures remain. This form protection applies under that section generally, not only to the newly added employee groups.

For property-tax appraisal records, the law adds the expanded attorney-general employee/family category and public-defender-office employees to the home-address protection. The existing election process still applies to those newly covered groups. It protects information connecting a named covered individual with a home address; it does not automatically make every property record secret or erase the property’s address from public records. The new public-defender category names employees, not a separate blanket category for all their relatives. Appraisal-record limits and election; Final covered groups.

What changed along the way?

The introduced bill already expanded attorney-general coverage, changed the family definition and protected confidentiality-request submissions. The sole indexed floor amendment, offered by Miles and adopted March 11, added current and former public-defender-office employees to the two Government Code categories and the Tax Code category. It survived unchanged in the final law. The referenced public-defender-office definition includes qualifying governmental entities and nonprofit organizations operating under a governmental agreement; it is not every private defense lawyer. Adopted amendment; Public-defender-office definition.

The Senate committee version otherwise matched the introduced text; the House made no additional operative changes. The bill also reconciles overlapping earlier Tax Code additions and provides a conflict rule for nonsubstantive code-correction legislation. The many other occupations printed in the amended sections are largely retained categories, not all newly created by SB370. All versions; Amendment index.

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?

The April 26 engrossed fiscal note anticipates no significant state or local fiscal impact and assumes state costs can be absorbed with existing resources; the earlier February 17 note reaches the same conclusion. The February 14 open-government impact statement says the bill restricts the open-records law. Latest fiscal note; Open-government impact statement.

Covered people gain privacy for sensitive personal details, while records requesters lose access to additional information and agencies must identify and redact protected material. The law does not make all employee work records, salaries or every public filing confidential. This briefing explains SB370’s changes and retained election mechanisms, not a ruling on an individual request or a guarantee against disclosure through every other source.

Official sources

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