Texas gives you one year to sue for defamation
The deadline is short, and a separate rule about correction requests can limit what you recover if you wait.
Texas has one of the shortest deadlines in civil law for defamation. Miss it and the claim is gone, no matter how false the statement was.
The one-year limit
A defamation suit in Texas must generally be filed within one year. For most online posts the clock starts on the day the statement was first published, not each day it stays up.
The correction request rule
Under the Texas Defamation Mitigation Act, you must ask the publisher for a correction, clarification or retraction before you can keep a lawsuit going. Timing matters here as well. If you do not make the request within 90 days of learning about the statement, you can lose the right to exemplary damages, which are the damages meant to punish.
What a good request looks like
A proper request is in writing, identifies you, quotes the false statement, says where and when it was published, and explains why it is false. A vague complaint may not count.
Why people run out of time
Many people spend months reporting a post to the platform and hoping it goes away. Those months count against the deadline. Reporting and legal action can run side by side.
What to do
Write down the date you first saw the post and the date it was published. Bring both to a lawyer early. A short letter sent in the first weeks protects options that cannot be recovered later.
This article is general information about the law. It is not legal advice and reading it does not make you a client of the firm. Laws change, so speak to a lawyer about your own situation.