What are the Texas TRAIGA private sector AI obligations?

Related Questions

• Does the Texas TRAIGA require biometric consent? For private-sector employers, no — TRAIGA itself does not impose the biometric consent obligation. Texas HB-149's (TRAIGA) prohibition on identifying individuals from publicly available biometric data without consent applies to government entities only. The controlling biometric consent law for private-sector employers is Texas's CUBI statute (Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act, Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §503.001): before capturing a biometric identifier — such as face geometry or a voiceprint in an AI video interview — for a commercial purpose, an employer must inform the individual and obtain consent, protect the data, and destroy it within a set period after the collection purpose ends. TRAIGA's 2025 amendments to CUBI, effective January 1, 2026, add an AI-model-training exception and clarify that media appearing publicly online does not by itself constitute consent unless the individual made it public. Enforcement of both TRAIGA and CUBI is exclusive to the Texas Attorney General; CUBI carries civil penalties up to $25,000 per violation. Employers already compliant with a strict biometric regime such as Illinois BIPA will generally meet CUBI's consent requirements.
• What AI rules apply to hiring in Texas? Texas does not currently have a private-sector AI hiring law that forces employers to disclose AI use, run bias audits, or let candidates opt out — there is no Texas equivalent of Illinois's AI Video Interview Act, Colorado's AI Act, or NYC Local Law 144. HB-2060 was a state-agency AI inventory and advisory law, not an employer hiring rule. TRAIGA (HB-149), effective January 1, 2026, is the main Texas AI statute for private employers, but for hiring it bites mainly when a tool is intentionally deployed to discriminate against a protected class or otherwise hits TRAIGA's prohibited-practice categories; TRAIGA does not create a general private-sector hiring disclosure mandate. TRAIGA's biometric-identification and social-scoring prohibitions apply to government entities only — biometric consent for private-sector AI tools, such as video-interview face or voice capture, is governed by Texas's CUBI statute (Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §503.001), not TRAIGA. Federal Title VII still applies, so an AI tool that produces a disparate impact on protected groups is a legal risk even without a Texas disclosure law. Practically, Texas employers should document each tool, its bias controls, any biometric-consent process, and a human-review checkpoint before any adverse hiring decision.
• Does Colorado require AI impact assessments? No longer. SB 26-189 (signed 2026-05-14) repealed and reenacted Colorado's AI Act, eliminating the impact-assessment requirement entirely. Colorado now instead requires deployers of automated decision-making technology (ADMT) to: give consumers clear interaction notice, disclose adverse consequential decisions within 30 days, allow correction of incorrect personal data, and provide meaningful human review and reconsideration. The statute formally takes effect 2026-08-12, but all compliance obligations — for deployers and developers alike — begin 2027-01-01.