Texas Traffic Camera Tickets: The Double Ban and the Leon Valley Holdout

Texas has banned both kinds of automated traffic camera enforcement: speed cameras since 2007 and red light cameras since 2019. New camera programs cannot lawfully start anywhere in the state. But the 2019 red light ban included a grandfather clause, and one small city, Leon Valley near San Antonio, has kept its cameras running under a pre-2019 contract, which is why some Texas drivers still see camera tickets years after the statewide ban.

Texas Banned Speed Cameras First, in 2007

Texas's camera ban actually predates the more commonly discussed 2019 red light ban by more than a decade. In 2007, the legislature enacted Transportation Code 542.2035: «A municipality may not implement or operate an automated traffic control system with respect to a highway or street under its jurisdiction for the purpose of enforcing compliance with posted speed limits.» That statute took effect September 1, 2007, and defines the banned device as one that records vehicle speed and produces images allowing a citation to issue without a peace officer's personal, contemporaneous involvement. No form of unmanned automated speed enforcement has been lawful anywhere in Texas since.

The 2019 Red Light Camera Ban

Red light cameras took longer to ban statewide, but the 2019 law that finally did it, HB 1631, was decisive. It added two new sections to the Transportation Code: 707.020, which states «a local authority may not implement or operate a photographic traffic signal enforcement system with respect to a highway or street,» and 707.021, which separately bars issuing «a civil or criminal charge or citation for an offense or violation based on a recorded image produced by a photographic traffic signal enforcement system.» The bill took effect immediately on June 2, 2019, passed by the two-thirds vote needed for immediate effect, and it repealed nearly all of the old Chapter 707 regulatory framework that had governed red light camera programs since their introduction.

One of the repealed provisions matters directly to anyone with an old, unpaid Texas red light camera ticket: former section 707.017, which had let counties and the DMV refuse to renew a vehicle's registration over unpaid camera fines. That specific enforcement lever is gone from current law. Older unpaid camera debts can still exist as ordinary civil obligations a city or vendor could pursue through collections, but the registration-refusal hook that used to back them up no longer applies under Chapter 707. Whether any county still uses a separate, general scofflaw statute to flag old legacy camera debt was not confirmed for this page, so do not assume either way.

The Grandfather Clause and Leon Valley

HB 1631 did not shut down every camera overnight. Section 7(a) of the bill let a system already under contract before May 7, 2019 keep running «until the expiration date specified in the contract as the contract existed on May 7, 2019.» Section 7(b) narrows that protection: it doesn't apply where the contract itself allowed the vendor to terminate the deal in response to adverse state legislation, which is effectively what had just happened.

Most cities that had grandfathered systems have since wound them down. Amarillo ended its program in August 2022. Humble and Balcones Heights both ended their contracts in 2024; Balcones Heights had been reported to have a contract extension to 2034, but that extension was reportedly never actually signed by the vendor.

Leon Valley, a small city near San Antonio, was the exception. As of 2025 reporting, it was still operating 14 grandfathered cameras, and its underlying vendor contract carries a multimillion-dollar buyout price if the city wanted out early. Here is where this page has to be careful about a story that gets conflated in some coverage: the 2034 figure belongs to Balcones Heights, not Leon Valley, an extension that was reported but never actually signed by the vendor and so never took effect. Leon Valley's own contract is reported as running to 2038 (per a 20-year contract signed in 2018) or 2039 (per other reporting), a narrower one-year discrepancy between sources rather than a 2034-versus-2039 conflict. Neither exact figure has been independently confirmed against the contract itself for this page, and Leon Valley's current operating status should be checked directly with the city or a recent local news source before relying on either date. A 2023 bill, SB 446, would have voided contracts like Leon Valley's outright; it did not pass, and no subsequent legislative session had confirmed a change to Leon Valley's status as of this writing.

What Still Uses Cameras in Texas

A few camera uses fall outside this ban entirely, because the ban is written specifically around red light and speed enforcement, not photography generally. Texas toll roads continue to use license-plate camera billing to collect unpaid tolls, which is a toll-collection function under a separate legal framework, not a traffic citation covered by the red light and speed camera bans. Officer-attended enforcement, where a human officer directly observes the violation and a camera merely documents it, is unaffected, since the ban targets automated citation issuance without officer involvement.

School Bus Stop-Arm Cameras: A Genuinely Unsettled Question

This is the one area of Texas camera law that is not simply banned or simply allowed; it's actually contested. HB 1631 repealed the old photographic-system civil-penalty hooks that had existed for school bus stop-arm cameras (former 542.405 and 542.406). A 2025 bill, SB 744, that would have explicitly re-authorized stop-arm cameras included a bill analysis stating that current law «generally prohibits» local authorities from using photographic traffic enforcement systems, creating «a legal barrier» for bus camera programs. That bill, and its House companion legislation, died without passing in the 2025 session, meaning the legislature considered and declined to resolve the question.

Despite that, some Texas school districts and cities, including Austin ISD and the cities of Wortham and Greenville, continue to run stop-arm camera programs, relying on a different statute (Transp. Code 545.066, the underlying school-bus passing law) combined with local ordinance theories rather than a clear statewide camera-specific authorization. An officer who personally witnesses a driver illegally passing a stopped school bus and issues a citation under 545.066 is on solid legal footing. A mailed civil ticket generated purely from a stop-arm camera, with no officer witnessing the violation, rests on genuinely contested legal authority in Texas. Treat any camera-based Texas school-bus ticket as an unsettled legal area, not a routine, clearly authorized citation.

Information last verified on 2026-08-12. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

Related Resources

• Traffic Camera Ticket Laws by State
• Do You Have to Pay a Camera Ticket?
• How to Fight a Camera Ticket
• Hit and Run Laws in the United States
• Texas Police Bodycam Laws

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Last updated: 2026-08-12.