§ 129.002.Rights, Privileges, or Obligations

A transitional provision that has quietly rewritten a great deal of older Texas law.

A law, rule, or ordinance enacted or adopted before August 27, 1973 that extends a right, privilege, or obligation to an individual on the basis of a minimum age of 19, 20, or 21 years shall be interpreted as prescribing a minimum age of 18.

The date is when Texas lowered the age of majority, and the section deals with the enormous body of law written when it was 21.

Rather than amending each provision, the Legislature reinterpreted them all at once. That is an efficient solution to a problem that would otherwise have required combing through every statute, rule and municipal ordinance in the state.

The reach is deliberately wide — a law, rule, or ordinance, so it covers agency rules and local ordinances as well as statutes.

And it covers obligations as well as rights and privileges, so a duty that attached at 21 under an older provision now attaches at 18.

Two limits are built in. The provision must predate August 27, 1973 — anything enacted since means what it says. And the older age must be 19, 20, or 21; a provision setting some other threshold is untouched.

The section is largely spent as new legislation replaces the old, but it continues to operate on whatever pre-1973 provisions remain in force.