What Is the Romeo and Juliet Law in Texas?

Texas has no statute called the Romeo and Juliet law. What Texas has is two separate things with two different age tests, and people confuse them constantly. One is an affirmative defense you raise at trial. The other is a petition you file after a conviction to get off the sex offender registry. They do not cover the same people, and neither one makes the conduct legal.

If you or your son is facing an allegation built on an age difference, the exposure here is a second-degree felony and lifetime registration, and the defense turns on facts that have to be nailed down early. Talk to a Houston sex crimes lawyer before anyone gives a statement to police.

Does Texas Actually Have a Romeo and Juliet Law?

Not by that name, and not as a single law. The phrase covers two mechanisms sitting in different codes:

• A close-in-age affirmative defense to sexual assault of a child in Penal Code § 22.011(e), and a separate one to indecency with a child in § 21.11(b). These are raised at trial and the elements are not the same in both statutes.
• An exemption from sex offender registration in Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 62.301, which you petition for after a conviction or a deferred adjudication, and which uses a different age gap entirely.

The two age tests do not match, which is the thing nobody explains:

	Affirmative defense (§ 22.011(e))	Registration exemption (Art. 62.301 with Art. 42.017)
Age gap	Not more than 3 years older	Not more than 4 years older
Minimum age of the other person	14	15
When it applies	At trial, to avoid conviction	After conviction, to avoid the registry

So a 19-year-old and a 15-year-old fall outside the three-year defense if the gap is more than three years, but can still be inside the four-year registration exemption. That gap is where a lot of these cases actually get resolved.

The Close-in-Age Defense to Sexual Assault of a Child

Section 22.011(e) gives an affirmative defense to prosecution under § 22.011(a)(2) if the actor was the spouse of the child at the time, or if all of the following were true:

• The actor was not more than three years older than the victim. Read that carefully. Exactly three years still qualifies. A lot of pages write this as “less than three years,” which is a narrower and wrong version of the rule.
• The actor was not required under Chapter 62 to register for life as a sex offender, or did not have a reportable conviction or adjudication for an offense under § 22.011.
• The victim was 14 years of age or older.
• The victim was not someone the actor was prohibited from marrying under § 25.01, or from engaging in sexual intercourse with under § 25.02. In plain terms, the family relationship bar.

Consent is not one of the elements. The statute does not mention it, and a page that lists “the act was consensual” as a requirement of § 22.011(e) is adding something the legislature did not write. Force or a threat changes the offense you are charged with, which is a different problem, but it is not part of this defense.

The Indecency With a Child Defense Is Written Differently

People treat § 21.11 as “the same statute for younger kids.” It isn’t. Indecency with a child is its own offense covering sexual contact or exposure, and its affirmative defense in § 21.11(b) has different elements from the sexual assault one:

• Not more than three years older and of the opposite sex. That second requirement has no counterpart in § 22.011(e).
• Did not use duress, force, or a threat against the victim. This one is written into § 21.11(b) and is not in § 22.011(e).
• The same lifetime-registration and reportable-conviction conditions.
• No minimum age for the victim. Section 21.11(b) has no 14-year-old floor, unlike the sexual assault defense.

Section 21.11(b-1) separately makes it an affirmative defense that the actor was the spouse of the child.

The punishment also splits. Under § 21.11(d), indecency by sexual contact is a second-degree felony and indecency by exposure is a third-degree felony. Treating both as second degree, which is what most pages do, overstates one and understates the other.

Thinking She Was 17 Is Not a Defense in Texas

This is the most dangerous piece of bad information circulating on this topic, and it appears on law firm websites.

Section 21.11(a) says a person commits indecency with a child “regardless of whether the person knows the age of the child at the time of the offense.” The legislature put that clause in the statute on purpose. It is not a drafting accident and there is no reasonable-belief exception hiding behind it.

So the fake ID, the dating profile that said 18, the older friends, the fact that she told you she was a senior: none of that is a defense to the age element in Texas. It can matter to a prosecutor deciding what to file and to a jury deciding punishment, and it is worth developing for those reasons. It will not get the case dismissed on its own, and anyone who tells you it will is either not a Texas lawyer or is not being careful with you.

These Are Affirmative Defenses, Which Means You Carry Them

The word “affirmative” is doing real work. Under Penal Code § 2.03(d), on an ordinary defense the jury is charged that a reasonable doubt on the issue requires acquittal. On an affirmative defense the burden flips: § 2.04(d) says the court shall charge that the defendant must prove it by a preponderance of the evidence, and § 2.04(c) keeps the issue from the jury at all unless evidence supporting it was admitted first.

That is not a formality. It means the birth certificates, the school records, the timeline of when the relationship started and when each person had a birthday, and the registry status all have to be gathered and put on by the defense. A case where the three-year math is close is won or lost on documents, and those documents get harder to obtain the longer anyone waits.

The Registration Exemption, Which Is What Most People Mean

Article 62.301 is the piece that actually keeps a young person off the public registry, and it came from Senate Bill 198 in the 82nd Legislature, effective September 1, 2011.

You petition the court that had jurisdiction over the case, and you can do it at any time on or after sentencing or the date of deferred adjudication placement. To be eligible, registration has to be required only because of a single reportable conviction or adjudication, other than an adjudication of delinquent conduct, and the judgment has to carry the affirmative finding under Art. 42.017.

That finding is the hinge, and it has its own numbers. Article 42.017 requires the judge to find that the defendant was not more than four years older than the victim, that the victim was at least 15, and that the conviction is based solely on the ages of the two people. Getting that finding entered in the judgment is something that happens at the plea or the sentencing, not years later, which is why it belongs in the conversation from the first meeting.

At the hearing the court can hear testimony from the victim or the victim’s family, and can consider what the relationship between the two people looks like now. The judge may grant the exemption if it appears by a preponderance that the exemption does not threaten public safety and that the conduct did not occur without the other person’s consent as described by § 22.011(b). An order granted under this article does not expire, though the court withdraws it if the person later picks up a new reportable conviction.

There is also a path for older cases. Article 62.301(c) reaches a defendant convicted or placed on deferred adjudication before September 1, 2011 who would have received the Art. 42.017 finding had the case happened after that date.

When Was the Romeo and Juliet Law Passed in Texas?

There is no single passage date, because there is no single law. The registration exemption is the part with a clean answer: SB 198, effective September 1, 2011, which also amended the Art. 42.017 finding that feeds it. Article 42.017 itself dates to 2001.

The affirmative defenses are much older and have been rewritten repeatedly. Section 22.011 has been amended in nearly every legislative session since it was added in 1983, including three separate times in the 2025 session. If you are researching a case from a few years back, the version of the statute in effect on the date of the offense is the one that controls, and it may not read the way the current one does.

What You’re Facing If Neither One Fits

Sexual assault of a child under § 22.011 is a second-degree felony, two to twenty years in prison and a fine up to $10,000. It rises to a first-degree felony where the victim was a person the actor was prohibited from marrying under § 25.01 or from engaging in sexual intercourse with under § 25.02.

Indecency with a child by sexual contact is a second-degree felony; by exposure, a third-degree felony carrying two to ten years.

Both carry sex offender registration, and registration is the consequence that outlasts everything else. It reaches where you can live and what work you can get, and it is the first thing anyone finds when they search your name.

Charged Over an Age Difference? Call Blass Law

We have defended criminal cases in Harris County and the counties around it since 2009, and criminal defense is the only thing this office does. These cases are frequently driven by a parent who found a phone, or by a relationship that ended badly, and they move fast once a report is made.

Two things matter more than anything else in the first week. Nobody in your family talks to an investigator without a lawyer present, and the documents that prove the ages and the timeline get pulled before anyone’s memory gets shaped by a police interview.

Contact Blass Law for a confidential case evaluation. If charges have already been filed, bring the paperwork and both dates of birth.