§ 17.033.Substituted Service Through Social Media Presence

A 2019 addition, effective June 2020, and the newest service method in Texas law.

If substituted service is already authorized under the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, the court may prescribe as a method an electronic communication sent to the defendant through a social media presence — in accordance with rules the supreme court is directed to adopt.

The first clause is the gate, and it is easily overlooked. This is not a primary method of service. It becomes available only once substituted service is authorized in the ordinary way — which requires a showing that personal service and service at the defendant's usual place of abode have been attempted without success.

The provision recognises a real change in how people are reachable. A defendant who has moved without a forwarding address, whose last known residence is stale, and who cannot be found by an ordinary skip trace may still be posting daily under their own name.

Subsection (b) makes the rulemaking mandatory — the supreme court shall adopt rules — so the operating detail lives in the rules rather than the statute. The court supervises the method case by case, deciding whether a particular account belongs to the defendant and whether a message to it is reasonably calculated to give notice.