Texas HUB is now VetHUB

What changed, and when

Search for guidance on the Texas HUB program and much of what comes back was written for rules that no longer operate. Texas no longer certifies Historically Underutilized Businesses. The Comptroller of Public Accounts replaced that program with VetHUB by emergency rule effective 2 December 2025, and permanent rules took effect on 12 May 2026. The replacement is named Veteran Heroes United in Business, shortened by the agency itself to VetHUB.

The sequence matters, because a business that stopped checking at any point along it holds a different picture of the rules. Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock announced an administrative freeze of the old program in October 2025 pending legal review, then announced emergency rules on 2 December 2025 that ran through 1 April 2026. Permanent rules were proposed in the 13 March 2026 issue of the Texas Register at 51 TexReg 1563, adopted with no changes to the proposed text, filed with the Secretary of State on 22 April 2026 and made effective on 12 May 2026 under TRD-202601741. The emergency rules were withdrawn the same day the permanent ones took hold.

Nine sections of Title 34 of the Texas Administrative Code were amended: sections 20.281, 20.282, 20.284, 20.285, 20.288, 20.294 through 20.296, and 20.298. None was repealed and no new section was created. The program was not abolished and rebuilt. It was redefined in place. The weight falls on the amendment to section 20.282, which the adopted preamble describes as revising the definition of qualifying owner to eliminate classifications based on race, ethnicity, and gender.

One absence belongs in the body of this page. The Texas Register carried the preamble to the adopted rules and said the text would not be republished, so the operative wording of the amended sections is not in that issue. It sits in the codified Administrative Code, and the state's code site was mid-migration on 13 August 2026 when these sources were checked. What follows comes from the Comptroller's published pages and from the emergency rule text, which agree on the disability rating.

Who qualifies now

The threshold is at least 20 percent, and a veteran rated below that does not qualify. That one number decides more applications than anything else here, and the Comptroller states it twice. The certification process page describes an eligible owner as a Service-Disabled Veteran with a service-related disability of 20% or greater. The frequently asked questions page requires at least a 20 percent service disability as identified by the federal military department. The emergency rule text filed in December 2025 defined the qualifying owner by reference to 38 U.S.C. section 101(2) and to a service-connected disability of at least 20 percent.

Four further conditions apply and each has sunk applications on its own. At least 51 percent of the business must be owned, managed and operated by qualifying owners, and the applicant has to prove control of the day to day operation, not merely a stake on paper. The owner must be an economically disadvantaged person. The business must be for-profit and must prove that its principal place of business is in Texas. And it must not exceed the size standard set by 34 TAC section 20.294, a section the Texas Register titles graduation procedures. Size is the test that catches firms who assume ownership is the whole question, and it is worked through under the standards that decide whether a business still counts as small.

What the certification will not do

It will not win work. A VetHUB certificate is a status in a state directory, and a directory listing has never obliged a buyer to order anything. It will not carry across to federal contracting: the U.S. Small Business Administration runs its own veteran certification under Title 13 Part 128 of the Code of Federal Regulations, with its own application, and a firm certified by Texas is not thereby certified by the SBA. The two ask about the same military service and score it against different rules. Both tests are set out on the guide to the veteran routes at both levels of government. And it will not make a business visible to a state buyer by itself. Visibility comes from registration on the Centralized Master Bidders List and from watching the boards where solicitations are posted, covered under what it takes to be listed as a vendor to the state.

What happened to certificates already issued

They were revoked, not allowed to run out, and the difference is why so many firms found out late. In the Comptroller's own words, the office revoked all businesses previously certified based on race, ethnicity or sex, unless they proved ownership and control by SDVs, and the December 2025 announcement said the agency would move expediently to revoke outdated certifications and issue new VetHUB certifications. No transition window appears on any Comptroller page consulted. Businesses already certified as service-disabled veteran owned by 2 December 2025 continue to be listed in the VetHUB directory.

Two protections survived the change. Contracts in existence before the effective date of the new rules are not affected. And a prime contractor that had filed a subcontracting plan was told it could rely on the directory as it stood: the emergency rule provided that such a vendor may rely on the comptroller's HUB directory as of the date it selects HUBs, and its plan will comply with these rules even if the HUBs' certifications are subsequently revoked.

A count of the firms that lost certification belongs here, and there is not one to give. No Comptroller page consulted publishes a figure. Numbers circulate in news coverage and advocacy material, none of them checkable against the agency's own directory, so this page repeats none. Separately, ten organizations that had certified businesses for the state program under memoranda of agreement no longer do so, the Dallas/Fort Worth Minority Supplier Development Council and the Women's Business Council Southwest among them. Hancock issued 60-day termination notices in December 2025, the agreements lapsed at the end of that notice period, and the Comptroller announced their expiration on 26 February 2026. Certification is now handled directly by the agency. Both of those councils still certify businesses under their own standards, and neither certificate now carries state recognition, a distinction laid out beside the other options on the page that sets the surviving routes side by side.

The court challenge, as reported

The change was challenged in Travis County district court. No source consulted reports any development after the permanent rules took effect, so the status of the case could not be confirmed as of 13 August 2026. What can be said with confidence comes from the pleading itself, read directly. A verified original petition dated 2 March 2026 was brought in the district court of Travis County against Hancock and the Office of the Comptroller, together with the heads of the Texas Department of Transportation, Health and Human Services, and the Texas Facilities Commission. It pleads sixteen counts, eleven against the Comptroller and the office and five against the other agency heads. The eleven run from statutory text and purpose and separation of powers, through failures of rulemaking procedure covering emergency rulemaking, notice, impact statements, public comment and reasoned justification, to due course of law, equal rights, ultra vires conduct, and prohibited discrimination in licensing under section 106.001 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. The relief sought is a temporary order, a permanent one, and attorney fees. Plaintiffs were added after that first filing, so the case carries two different styles across the accounts of it.

The state's position is on the record in its own rulemaking. The December 2025 announcement said the emergency rules brought the program into alignment with the Texas and U.S. constitutions by removing race- and sex-based preferences, that phrasing being the agency's own. Answering comments that questioned his authority, the Comptroller wrote:

The comptroller has a solemn obligation to uphold the Texas Constitution. The suggestion that the comptroller may not consult the constitution and apply it to the situation at hand lacks merit. Moreover, the courts have spoken: race-based programs that lack narrow tailoring are unconstitutional. These rules implement Government Code, Chapter 2161 to the greatest extent permitted by those decisions.

Then comes the part most likely to be misread. A Travis County district judge signed a temporary injunction in mid-April 2026, and every account consulted here describes its reach as limited to the six plaintiff businesses instead of to Texas firms at large. The San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce calls the ruling limited in scope and writes that it temporarily restores the program only for the six businesses that filed suit. Government Technology reports that the order preserves the reading of the law in effect on 1 December 2025, denies the defendants' plea to the jurisdiction, requires the Comptroller to reinstate the certifications of those plaintiffs and to notify state agencies and prime contractors, sets a bond of $500 for each named plaintiff, and carries a trial date of 9 November 2026. The Denton Record-Chronicle reported that a spokesperson said the Comptroller's office intended to appeal to the Fifteenth Court of Appeals. Whether a notice of appeal was in fact filed could not be confirmed, and no appellate ruling was found.

What none of that establishes is where any particular business now stands. The order is reported to run to the named plaintiffs while also requiring notice to agencies and prime contractors across the state, and the Comptroller's published pages describe the VetHUB rules without qualification. Those two things do not resolve into an answer for a firm that was not a party, and this page will not manufacture one.

Where the answer to your own position lives

For a veteran who clears the rating and the ownership tests, the route is open, costs nothing and runs through CMBL registration and then the certification portal, with up to 90 days for a review. For a business that held a certificate on any other basis, the state route is shut, and the useful question is which of the remaining routes fits.

For anyone whose position turns on the litigation, three places hold the record and this page does not. The Comptroller's program staff, reachable through the contact details on the VetHUB program page, speak for the agency on whether a certification stands. The Travis County district clerk holds the filings and any order signed in the case. The Fifteenth Court of Appeals holds anything on appeal. Every source below was checked on 13 August 2026, and nothing here should be treated as current without a fresh look: the rules moved twice inside nine months and a trial date sits ahead of this page. Certifying is one gate of five, and the gate before it and the two after it are set out at the front of this publication.