Selling, distributing, exhibiting, or displaying harmful material to a person under 18 is charged under Texas Penal Code § 43.24. The base offense is a Class A misdemeanor; it rises to a third-degree felony only when someone hires, employs, or uses a minor to commit it. Below: the statute’s exact elements and three-part “harmful material” test, how § 43.24 differs from sexual performance by a child (§ 43.25) and online solicitation (§ 33.021), the punishment table, the affirmative defenses written into the statute, and the collateral consequences.
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Published 2026-07-05 · Reviewed by Reggie London and Njeri London, Co-Founding Partners · Last reviewed: 2026-07-05
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Controlling statute:Tex. Penal Code § 43.24 Classification: Class A misdemeanor (base); third-degree felony if a person hires, employs, or uses a minor to commit the offense under subsection (b)(3) Punishment range: Class A misdemeanor (up to 1 year county jail + up to $4,000); third-degree felony (2–10 years TDCJ + up to $10,000)
What is harmful material to a minor under § 43.24?
Texas Penal Code § 43.24 — titled “Sale, Distribution, or Display of Harmful Material to Minor” — makes it an offense to expose a person younger than 18 to obscene or sexually explicit material. It is a companion to the broader Texas obscenity statute (§ 43.23), but it is written specifically to protect children, and it uses a lower, child-focused standard for what material is off-limits. In the statute’s own definitions, a “minor” is an individual younger than 18 years, and “harmful material” is measured by the material’s dominant theme taken as a whole.
That definition is a three-part test. Under § 43.24(a)(2), material is “harmful” only if its dominant theme, taken as a whole: (A) appeals to the prurient interest of a minor in sex, nudity, or excretion; (B) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable for minors; and (C) is utterly without redeeming social value for minors. All three prongs must be satisfied. Lawyers call this a “variable obscenity” standard because the yardstick shifts with the audience: material that is perfectly lawful to sell to an adult can still be “harmful” when the target is a child. That framework traces to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ginsberg v. New York, which upheld a state’s power to protect minors from material adults may lawfully obtain.
The statute then describes three ways to commit the offense. Under § 43.24(b), a person commits an offense if, knowing that the material is harmful: (1) and knowing the person is a minor, the person sells, distributes, exhibits, or possesses for sale, distribution, or exhibition to a minor harmful material; (2) the person displays harmful material and is reckless about whether a minor is present who will be offended or alarmed by the display; or (3) the person hires, employs, or uses a minor to do or assist in doing any of the acts prohibited in (b)(1) or (b)(2). The mental states differ across the three theories, and that difference — knowledge of the minor’s age in (b)(1) versus recklessness in (b)(2) — is often where a defense begins.
How is § 43.24 different from related child-protection statutes?
Section 43.24 lives in a cluster of statutes that all involve minors and sexual or explicit content, and they are frequently confused — and frequently charged together. The clearest way to separate them is to ask what role the minor plays: is the minor the viewer of material, or the subject of it? Section 43.24 is a viewer statute. The others below are largely subject statutes, and they are far more serious.
Statute
Core conduct
The minor is the…
Typical grade
§ 43.24 — Harmful Material to a Minor
Selling, distributing, exhibiting, or displaying harmful (obscene) material to a minor
Sexually explicit online communication with, or solicitation of, a minor
Target of solicitation
Third- or second-degree felony
Three distinctions do most of the work. First, § 43.25 punishes using a child in sexual conduct; § 43.24 punishes exposing a child to explicit material. Section 43.25 is a registrable sex offense; the base version of § 43.24 is not. Second, § 43.261 is the Legislature’s deliberately lighter response to teen “sexting” among minors — it exists so that ordinary adolescent conduct is not prosecuted as felony child pornography, and it should not be confused with an adult sending explicit material to a child, which is exactly what § 43.24 reaches. Third, § 33.021 overlaps heavily with § 43.24 in the digital context: an adult who sends sexually explicit images to a minor online may be charged under both, because transmitting the material can satisfy § 43.24(b)(1) while the surrounding communication satisfies § 33.021. When multiple statutes are charged from one course of conduct, sorting out which counts actually fit the facts is a central defense task.
What are the penalties for harmful material to a minor?
The grading rule is short and sits in one subsection. Under § 43.24(d), an offense is a Class A misdemeanor unless it is committed under subsection (b)(3) — hiring, employing, or using a minor to commit the offense — in which event it is a felony of the third degree. There is no value ladder and no count-based escalation; the single dividing line is whether a minor was used. The ranges below come from Penal Code § 12.21 (Class A) and § 12.34 (third degree):
Level
When it applies
Confinement
Fine cap
Class A misdemeanor
Base offense — selling, distributing, exhibiting, or displaying harmful material to a minor under (b)(1) or (b)(2)
Up to 1 year, county jail
$4,000
Third-degree felony
Committed under (b)(3) — a person hires, employs, or uses a minor to accomplish or assist the offense
2–10 years, TDCJ
$10,000
Last reviewed
2026-07-05
A few practical points shape how these ranges play out. Because the base offense is a Class A misdemeanor, a first-time case is typically eligible for community supervision (probation) and, in appropriate cases, for a negotiated resolution that avoids a final conviction; eligibility is governed by Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 42A and the court’s discretion. General enhancement rules in Penal Code Chapter 12 can raise the punishment level if the accused has qualifying prior convictions, so prior-record analysis matters even on the misdemeanor tier. And because every version of the offense involves a minor, prosecutors and courts tend to treat it with more caution than an ordinary Class A case — conditions of supervision can be restrictive, and the collateral effects discussed below often matter more than the sentence itself.
Elements the State must prove
Each element must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. A failure of proof on any one defeats the charge:
1. Knowledge that the material is harmful
Every theory under § 43.24(b) opens with “knowing that the material is harmful.” The State must prove the accused was aware of the character of the material — not merely that the material was in fact explicit. A person who forwarded a file without knowing its content, or reasonably believed it fell outside the harmful-material definition, contests this element.
2. Material that meets the three-part harmful test
The material’s dominant theme, taken as a whole, must appeal to the prurient interest of a minor in sex, nudity, or excretion; be patently offensive to adult standards about what is suitable for minors; and be utterly without redeeming social value for minors. All three prongs are elements. Material with genuine literary, artistic, scientific, or educational value fails prong (C) and is not “harmful” under the statute.
3. A culpable act — sell, distribute, exhibit, display, or use a minor
The State must tie the accused to one of the statutory acts: selling, distributing, exhibiting, or possessing harmful material for those purposes to a minor (b)(1); displaying it (b)(2); or hiring, employing, or using a minor to accomplish those acts (b)(3). The particular act charged controls which mental state and which grade apply.
4. The correct mental state as to the minor
Under (b)(1), the State must prove the accused acted knowing the person is a minor. Under (b)(2), there is no age-knowledge requirement; instead the State must prove the accused was reckless about whether a minor was present who would be offended or alarmed by the display. Which subsection is charged therefore decides whether a “did not know the age” defense is even available.
5. The victim was younger than 18
“Minor” means an individual younger than 18 at the time of the offense. Age is a fact the State must establish, and in online cases where the recipient’s true age was represented as 18 or older, this element and the age-knowledge element in (b)(1) are frequently contested together.
Typical fact patterns
Charges under § 43.24 arise in a handful of recurring scenarios, and the digital ones now dominate the docket:
Sending explicit images or video to a minor
The most common modern § 43.24 case involves an adult who texts, direct-messages, emails, or uses an app to send sexually explicit images or video to someone under 18. Transmitting that material can satisfy the “distributes” or “exhibits” language of (b)(1). These cases are routinely filed alongside online solicitation of a minor (§ 33.021) when the messages also include solicitation, so a single exchange can generate both a misdemeanor and a felony count. Where a sting is involved and the “minor” was an officer, the age-knowledge element and the identity of the recipient become live issues.
Retail or venue display cases
The reckless-display theory in (b)(2) reaches physical displays — for example, sexually explicit material placed on open shelves, screens, or signage where children are present in a store, arcade, or other venue. Here the fight is usually about recklessness: whether the person consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk that a minor would be exposed, as opposed to a minor simply happening upon the material.
Providing adult material to a teenager in person
Older, non-digital fact patterns still occur: an adult who shows or gives explicit magazines, DVDs, or images to a teenager. The analysis is the same — the material must meet the three-part test, and for a (b)(1) charge the State must prove the accused knew the recipient was under 18.
Using a minor to distribute or display
The felony variant under (b)(3) covers a person who hires, employs, or uses a minor to accomplish or assist the prohibited distribution or display. This is the only route to a third-degree felony under this statute, and it requires proof that a minor was actually used to carry out the conduct — a materially different allegation from simply exposing a minor to material.
Defense strategies against a § 43.24 charge
Defense work on this statute runs along several tracks, and two of them are written directly into the law:
The statutory defenses (subsections (c-1) and (c-2))
Section 43.24 contains two defenses on its face. Under subsection (c-1), it is a defense to prosecution that the accused was the spouse of the minor at the time of the offense. Under subsection (c-2), it is an affirmative defense to a charge under (b)(1) or (2) that, at the time of the offense, the person was a judicial or law-enforcement officer discharging the officer’s official duties. A defense and an affirmative defense are handled differently at trial — an affirmative defense must be proven by the defendant by a preponderance of the evidence, while a defense simply requires the State to disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt once raised — so identifying which applies is a threshold step. Important update: the statute’s former defense for scientific, educational, governmental, or other similar justified purposes was repealed effective September 1, 2025 (Acts 2025, 89th Leg., S.B. 412). For conduct on or after that date, that justification is no longer a statutory defense, although the underlying value of the material still bears on whether it is “harmful” at all under prong (C) of the definition.
The material is not “harmful” under the three-part test
Because “harmful material” is defined narrowly, the definition is itself a defense. The State must prove all three prongs — prurient appeal to a minor, patent offensiveness to adult standards for minors, and the utter absence of redeeming social value for minors. Material with genuine artistic, literary, scientific, or educational value fails the test. So does material whose dominant theme, taken as a whole, is not sexual. Forcing the State to prove each prong image-by-image, rather than accepting a conclusory “it’s obscene” label, is often the heart of the trial defense.
Knowledge and age-knowledge challenges
Two mental-state elements can break the State’s case. The accused must have known the material was harmful, and — for a (b)(1) charge — must have known the recipient was a minor. In online cases where a profile stated the user was an adult or age was otherwise misrepresented, the age-knowledge element is genuinely contestable. Choosing to attack the age element only works against a (b)(1) theory; if the State charges reckless display under (b)(2), the defense pivots to recklessness instead.
Digital attribution and how the material moved
In transmission cases, the State must connect a specific person to the act of sending the material. Shared devices, spoofed or hijacked accounts, group chats, and auto-forwarding features all complicate attribution. An independent review of the device and account records — who actually sent what, from which account, and when — frequently exposes gaps between the forensic artifacts and the story in the charging instrument.
Suppression of unlawfully obtained evidence
Many of these cases begin with a seizure of a phone or computer. Warrant affidavits can be challenged for staleness, lack of probable cause linking the device to the offense, and overbroad scope; evidence obtained in violation of the law is excludable under Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 38.23. When the messages or images are suppressed, the prosecution’s proof often collapses with them.
Felony variant & collateral consequences
The only escalation built into § 43.24 is the jump from Class A misdemeanor to third-degree felony when a minor is hired, employed, or used under (b)(3). Beyond that internal step, the general enhancement provisions of Penal Code Chapter 12 can raise the punishment range where the accused has qualifying prior convictions. There is no image-count ladder and no value ladder in this statute — the number of images or the number of times material was sent affects negotiation and sentencing argument, but it does not mechanically change the grade.
Does § 43.24 require sex-offender registration?
The base Class A misdemeanor under § 43.24 is not itself listed among the “reportable convictions or adjudications” in Code of Criminal Procedure Article 62.001(5), which is the exclusive list of offenses that trigger Chapter 62 registration. That is a meaningful contrast with the neighboring statutes — § 43.25 and § 43.26 are on that list. The practical risk in § 43.24 cases is not the statute itself but the companion counts: online solicitation of a minor under § 33.021 and offenses under §§ 43.25 or 43.26 are registrable, and a conviction on one of those counts triggers registration even if the § 43.24 count would not. Registration follows the specific statute of conviction, and the Legislature amends Article 62.001(5) frequently, so registration exposure must always be confirmed against the current statute before any plea.
Other collateral consequences
A conviction under § 43.24 — even the misdemeanor version — is a criminal record involving a minor, which draws heightened scrutiny from employers, licensing boards, and schools. It can affect professional and educator certification, immigration status for noncitizens (which requires review by immigration counsel before any plea), housing, and family-law proceedings. The felony (b)(3) variant adds the consequences that attach to any felony conviction, including firearm disability under Penal Code § 46.04 and federal law (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)). Whether a record can later be sealed or expunged depends entirely on the disposition; a dismissal or acquittal opens expunction avenues that a conviction forecloses, which is one more reason the outcome of the case — not just the sentence — matters. Do not destroy evidence after learning of an investigation: deleting messages or wiping a device can be charged separately as tampering with physical evidence under Penal Code § 37.09.
Key Legal Terms
Harmful Material
Material whose dominant theme, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest of a minor in sex, nudity, or excretion; is patently offensive to adult standards for what is suitable for minors; and is utterly without redeeming social value for minors (§ 43.24(a)(2)). All three prongs are required.
Variable Obscenity
The principle that material can be legal for adults yet unlawful to provide to minors, because obscenity is judged against the audience. Section 43.24 applies this child-focused standard, drawn from Ginsberg v. New York.
Minor
Under § 43.24(a)(1), an individual younger than 18 years of age. Age is an element the State must prove, and in (b)(1) cases the accused must also have known the recipient was a minor.
Prurient Interest
A morbid or shameful interest in sex, nudity, or excretion, as distinct from ordinary interest. Prong (A) of the harmful-material test measures prurient appeal specifically to a minor.
Affirmative Defense
A defense the accused must prove by a preponderance of the evidence, such as the on-duty judicial or law-enforcement officer defense in § 43.24(c-2). It differs from an ordinary defense (like the spouse defense in (c-1)), which the State must disprove beyond a reasonable doubt once raised.
Class A Misdemeanor
The most serious misdemeanor level in Texas: up to one year in county jail and a fine of up to $4,000 under Penal Code § 12.21. It is the base classification for harmful material to a minor.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is selling or showing harmful material to a minor a felony in Texas?
Usually it is a Class A misdemeanor. Under Texas Penal Code § 43.24(d), selling, distributing, exhibiting, or displaying harmful material to a minor is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in county jail and a fine of up to $4,000. It becomes a third-degree felony only in one situation — when a person hires, employs, or uses a minor to help commit the offense under subsection (b)(3), which carries 2 to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
What counts as “harmful material” under § 43.24?
Section 43.24(a)(2) defines it by a three-part test applied to the material's dominant theme taken as a whole: it must (A) appeal to the prurient interest of a minor in sex, nudity, or excretion; (B) be patently offensive to prevailing adult-community standards about what is suitable for minors; and (C) be utterly without redeeming social value for minors. All three prongs must be met. This is a “variable obscenity” standard — material can be legal for adults yet still be harmful when directed at a minor.
Can texting or sending explicit images to a minor be charged under § 43.24?
Yes. Sending sexually explicit images or video to someone under 18 by text, direct message, email, or app can be charged as distributing or exhibiting harmful material to a minor. In practice, prosecutors often pair a § 43.24 count with online solicitation of a minor under § 33.021 or electronic transmission of certain visual material, because a single course of conduct can satisfy more than one statute.
How is § 43.24 different from sexual performance by a child under § 43.25?
They target opposite roles. Section 43.24 is about exposing a minor to obscene or explicit material — the minor is the viewer or recipient. Section 43.25 (sexual performance by a child) is about using or inducing a minor to engage in or be depicted in sexual conduct — the minor is the subject. Section 43.25 is a far more serious felony and carries sex-offender registration; § 43.24 in its base form does not.
Does a § 43.24 conviction require sex-offender registration?
The base Class A misdemeanor under § 43.24 is not itself listed among the reportable convictions in Code of Criminal Procedure Article 62.001(5). Companion charges commonly filed alongside it — such as online solicitation of a minor under § 33.021 or offenses under §§ 43.25 or 43.26 — do trigger registration. Because registration follows the specific statute of conviction and the Legislature amends the list frequently, exposure must be confirmed against the current statute before any plea.
What are the defenses written into § 43.24?
The statute contains two. Under subsection (c-1) it is a defense that the accused was the spouse of the minor at the time of the offense. Under subsection (c-2) it is an affirmative defense to a charge under (b)(1) or (2) that the person was a judicial or law-enforcement officer discharging official duties. Note that the older defense for scientific, educational, governmental, or similar justified purposes was repealed effective September 1, 2025, so it can no longer be raised for conduct on or after that date.
What does it mean that the offense can be committed “recklessly”?
Subsection (b)(2) covers displaying harmful material while being reckless about whether a minor is present who will be offended or alarmed by the display — for example, a public or retail display visible to children. Recklessness is a lower mental state than knowledge, but the State must still prove the person consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk that a minor would be exposed, not merely that a minor happened to see it.
Is it a defense that I did not know the person was a minor?
It can be central to the case. A conviction under subsection (b)(1) requires that the person acted knowing the recipient was a minor. If the State cannot prove that knowledge — for instance, where age was misrepresented on a platform — that theory can fail. Age knowledge is not an element of the reckless-display theory under (b)(2), so which subsection is charged matters a great deal to this defense.
What are the collateral consequences of a § 43.24 conviction?
Even the misdemeanor version creates a criminal record that can affect employment, professional and educator licensing, housing, and immigration status for noncitizens, and it involves a minor, which draws heightened scrutiny. A felony conviction under the (b)(3) variant adds the loss of firearm rights under Penal Code § 46.04 and federal law and the other consequences that attach to any felony. Whether the record can later be sealed depends entirely on the disposition and should be planned before a plea.
What should I do if I am under investigation for § 43.24?
Do not talk to investigators and do not consent to a search of your phone, computer, or accounts — ask for a lawyer first. Do not delete messages, images, or apps, because destroying potential evidence can be charged separately as tampering under Penal Code § 37.09. Preserve what you have, write down what happened while it is fresh, and get defense counsel involved before charges are filed, when the case can still be shaped.
Reggie London co-founded L and L Law Group with a focus on federal criminal defense, complex felony defense, and TEA/SBEC matters. Licensed in Texas, admitted to TXND and TXED.
Njeri London co-founded L and L Law Group with a focus on DWI defense, family violence cases, and juvenile defense. Licensed in Texas, admitted to TXND and TXED.
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