Is Texas a one-party consent state?

Tex. Penal Code § 16.02(c)(4) makes it an affirmative defence that a person not acting under colour of law intercepts where "the person is a party to the communication" or one party consented, "unless the communication is intercepted for the purpose of committing an unlawful act".

The distinction matters procedurally rather than practically: an affirmative defence is something the defendant raises, not something the prosecution has to disprove. Wire, oral and electronic are covered, so in-person is inside. An expectation of privacy is required for oral communications; we did not read the definition verbatim, so that element is RCFP-sourced.

Texas has a separate civil cause of action, and it is the notable feature of Texas law for this purpose.

Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 123.002 gives a party to the communication a suit against a person who intercepts, attempts to, or procures another to intercept; who uses or divulges information so obtained; or who as landlord, building operator or carrier aids or permits an interception.

§ 123.004 then provides an injunction, statutory damages of $10,000 for each occurrence, actual damages in excess of $10,000, punitive damages, and reasonable fees and costs.

So a lawful one-party recording is criminally safe, and a recording that loses the consent defence exposes the recorder to a $10,000-per-occurrence floor plus fees. That is a materially larger practical risk than the phrase one-party consent suggests.

A felony of the second degree under § 16.02(f), unless committed under (d) or (g), in which case a state jail felony. RCFP says only "felony", so the degree here is the more precise finding; we did not source the § 12.33 sentencing range.

The civil exposure is set out above and is the larger of the two in practice.

Being one of the people in the conversation answers the question for Texas. It does not answer it for whoever is on the other end. No rule settles which state's law applies when the participants are in different places, more than one may apply at once, and courts have reached opposite results on comparable facts. If anyone on the call might be in an all-party state, the safe posture is theirs rather than yours. The general problem is on the US overview.

Nothing in Texas law requires you to say anything, which is a different thing from it being a good idea. The reason to announce it anyway is the person on the other end of the call, who may be somewhere stricter, and the reason to ask rather than tell is that it puts an answer on the record instead of an assumption.

I'm recording this for notes, stored on my machine only. Any objection?

Then leave a beat. Longer versions, and what to do when someone says no, are on telling people you're recording.

Earkeep records continuously and announces itself to nobody: no bot in the participant list, no banner on anyone else's screen. In a one-party state that is legally unremarkable, and it is still the reason nobody in the room knows unless you say so.

The controls exist for when somebody would rather you didn't. A pause from the live edge releases the microphone and the system audio stream, so your operating system's own recording indicator goes dark and the person who asked can watch it happen rather than take your word for it. A meeting on a connected calendar can be marked never-record. And a stretch of the day, or a saved meeting with its transcript, can be purged: the lines come out of the file on your own disk and nothing is written in their place, with no server copy to reconcile against because there is no server.

None of that makes a recording lawful anywhere, and the audio never leaving your device is not an answer to a consent statute. It is a good answer to "where does this go", which is usually the question the room actually has.

• RCFP, Reporter's Recording Guide: Texas
• Tex. Penal Code § 16.02
• Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 123.002
• § 123.004

• US recording laws, state by state: the federal baseline, the cross-border problem, and all 51 jurisdictions.
• Telling people you're recording: the scripts, and the three ways to stop.
• Private by design: why the audio never leaves your computer.

This page is legal information, not legal advice. It summarises statutes and cases rather than replacing them, and we are not lawyers. If the answer matters, ask someone who can be held to their answer.