The Texas legislature last month passed a bill that will become a law and close the loopholes in reporting mental health hospitalizations of juveniles. The goal of this is to add another layer of background checks for anyone who has a juvenile record of mental health hospitalizations. The bill’s author made clear that this is not a red flag law and that those records will be corrected once a person is shown by judicial order they are no longer mentally incapacitated.

Senate Bill 728 has passed the legislature and will go to the Governor’s desk. While there was a law passed in 2009 to report court-ordered mental health hospitalizations, those involved in the juvenile system and the courts did not know how to implement it for a variety of reasons.

Juvenile records are kept closely guarded and there were reporting issues because many mental health hospitalizations for juveniles are not court-ordered. “Juvenile officials say that in many cases juveniles end up in inpatient treatment not through a judge’s order, but via treatment plans agreed to by mental health professionals working on their cases,” wrote ProPublica. Judges interviewed for this investigation said that they interpreted the law as addressing “only the mental health commitments of juveniles already in lockup, not those first entering the system.” 

However, Senate Bill 728 has sought to close the gap by mandating courts provide reports of juvenile mental health hospitalization to the Texas DPS, which will report those to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Gun sellers will be able to look at this database before selling a gun to someone with a history of mental health issues. 

An expectant bill to pass the House missed a key deadline for a House floor vote. HB 2744 would have raised the age to buy a semi-automatic rifle in Texas to 21 years old. However, it is  expected to be dead in the House having missed the key deadline.

Other bills are expected to miss the Senate since the Legislature will end on May 29th.