Your Texas electrician license expired. Here is what happens now.
If your license has already expired, you probably have more time than you think. Texas does not cut you off the day it lapses. There are four windows, and which one you are in depends only on how long it has been since the expiration date printed on your license.
One thing first, because it matters more than the paperwork: an expired license is not a license. Texas law says a person whose license has expired may not do the work that requires the license until it has been renewed. So the windows below are about renewing, not about carrying on while you sort it out.
The four windows
Expired 90 days or less
You renew the normal way. TDLR charges one and a half times the usual renewal fee.
Expired more than 90 days but less than 18 months
You still renew the normal way. TDLR charges two times the usual renewal fee.
Expired at least 18 months but less than 3 years
You can still renew, and this is the part most people get wrong. It stops being automatic: you have to ask TDLR’s executive director to approve the late renewal, using TDLR’s “Request to Executive Director for Expired License Renewal” form, and explain why it is late. The fee is two times the usual renewal fee.
Worth knowing if you go and read the law yourself: the statute’s general rule does say a license expired 18 months or more may not be renewed. This third window is the written exception to that, and it is what keeps the door open to the three year mark.
Expired 3 years or more
This is the hard stop. You cannot renew. To get back to work you apply for a new license from the beginning, and that includes meeting the examination requirements that apply to a new applicant.
A note on the fee
The late fee replaces the normal renewal fee. It is not charged on top of it.
How to tell which window you are in
Count from the expiration date printed on your license. Not the day a notice arrived, not the day you stopped working, and not the day you pay. The law measures how long the license “has been expired,” so the expiration date is the only date that counts.
If you are not sure of the date, you can look yourself up on TDLR’s license search.
You still need your continuing education
A late renewal is not a way around the CE. Renewing still requires your 4 hours.
The question that matters when you are already expired is whether CE you take NOW counts toward a late renewal. TDLR answers that separately for each program, and the answer is genuinely not the same for every trade, so here is what TDLR publishes for yours.
Be careful here, because TDLR does not publish an answer for your program. Its electrician continuing education page sets out the normal requirement but says nothing about late renewal, so there is no published rule for us to point you to, and we are not going to invent one.
Some TDLR programs do say plainly that continuing education taken within a year before the renewal date counts, even if the license had already expired. Yours does not say that, one way or the other. We have asked TDLR to confirm it. Until they answer, the sensible course is to finish your continuing education and renew close together, and if your license has been expired a long time, call TDLR’s Education and Examination division first and ask what they will accept in your situation.
If you have been expired more than 3 years, do not buy a course yet
Our course will not renew a license that has been expired for three years or more, because at that point there is nothing to renew. You would be applying for a new license, which is a different process with different requirements, including the exams.
We would rather tell you that now than take your money for something that cannot help. Contact TDLR and find out what your route back looks like first.
If you served
Texas has separate rules under Occupations Code chapter 55, and the three groups are not treated the same, so check which one is yours.
If YOUR OWN license expired while you were on active duty, TDLR describes an additional two years to renew, up to five years in total, with no renewal fee and no examination requirement. If your license did not expire while you were on active duty, you pay the renewal fee as normal.
If you are the SPOUSE of a service member and your license expired while your spouse was on active duty, the exam can be waived, but TDLR still has you pay the late renewal fee. The fee waiver is not the same for spouses as it is for service members, so do not assume it carries across.
Either way these are applied for BY MAIL. TDLR says online applications are not supported for military benefits, so start at TDLR’s military pages rather than the normal renewal screen.
What we do and what we do not do
We are an approved TDLR continuing education provider. We provide the 4 hour course, and when you finish it we report your completion to TDLR for you, so that is not something you have to chase.
We do not renew your license. Only TDLR does that, on TDLR’s own website, and the renewal fee is theirs, not ours. What we can do is make sure the continuing education part is finished and reported, so it is not the thing holding you up.
Ready to get the CE done?
Start the 4 hour Texas electrician courseSources: Texas Occupations Code Section 51.401 (license expiration and renewal), Texas Occupations Code chapter 55 (military service members, veterans and spouses), and TDLR’s own continuing education page for this trade. Fees, forms and the renewal itself are handled by TDLR at tdlr.texas.gov. This page explains the rules in plain language and is not legal advice. If your situation is unusual, TDLR is the authority, not us.