With the state's highest criminal court weighing whether to overturn a 3½-year-old "revenge porn" law, a House Democrat and a Senate Republican have introduced legislation designed to protect criminal penalties for those who share intimate or sexually explicit photos and videos without consent.

The proposals contain a small but significant tweak by targeting violators who knowingly post revenge porn images with the intent to harm the person pictured.

The change is intended to correct one major problem identified by the Tyler-based 12th Court of Appeals when it found the 2015 law unconstitutional, ruling that it was too broadly written because it could be applied to anybody who reposted an image, even those who didn't know the person involved or were unaware that the image came from a revenge porn scenario.

"It violates rights of too many third parties by restricting more speech than the Constitution permits," the appeals court concluded in its April 2018 ruling.

Rep. Mary González, D-Clint, said she and Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, hope the new language can rescue a law that protects Texans, primarily women, who have complained of harassment and stalking after intimate photos and videos were published online — typically by a former partner or spouse — without their permission.

"This has destroyed lives," González said. "We heard stories from victims that, after their photos were put online, people were contacting them because it included their addresses, phone numbers, Facebook profiles."

The House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee will hold a public hearing on González's House Bill 98 Monday afternoon — early action that improves its chances of passage before the legislative session ends in late May. The House version of the bill will be changed slightly to make it identical to Huffman's Senate Bill 342.

"It's a significant priority because we really want to make sure we're taking care of people," González said.

Under the Texas law, there must be a reasonable expectation that the intimate photos or videos were intended to be kept private and the victim must be identifiable. It doesn't matter if the images were recorded consensually or freely provided by the victim.

Violations are a state jail felony with a maximum punishment of two years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

The future of the law is now in the hands of the Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court, which is reviewing the 12th Court of Appeals ruling and will determine whether the revenge porn law can be enforced or should be struck down.

By narrowing the law's focus, however, the two bills would address only one concern that the court will consider.

The other, potentially stickier issue is the 12th Court's finding that the law violates the First Amendment by requiring the government to examine what was depicted in photos or videos to determine whether the law was broken. That is a "content-based" restriction, the court said, adding that it is almost impossible to justify government limits based on the subject matter of photos, speeches and other forms of expression.

Mark Bennett, a Houston lawyer leading legal challenges to the revenge porn law by several men and women charged with the crime, argues that the First Amendment would be substantially weakened if free speech can be limited due to privacy rights.

Nothing the Legislature has proposed, he said, can cure the revenge porn law's status as a content-based restriction.

"Part of this test is, if it is a content-based restriction on speech, then the law is presumed to be unconstitutional," Bennett said.

Stacey Soule, the state prosecuting attorney who is defending the law, argues that Texas officials have a compelling right to protect citizens by regulating private speech that infringes on personal, often intimate, privacy.

Pending legislation is not expected to affect the timing of the Court of Criminal Appeals decision, she said.

"I think the Legislature is being proactive in the event the CCA strikes it down, which I am confident that it will not do," Soule said.

Huffman said she also believed the revenge porn law will survive a court ruling.

"However, in the event that the Court of Criminal Appeals finds the language of the original statute lacking, the Legislature must be ready to step in so that these terrible crimes can be prosecuted, the perpetrators punished and the victims protected," Huffman said.