Can you subpoena text messages? Usually not from the phone carrier, at least not the actual words of the messages. Federal law bars wireless providers from turning over message content to private litigants, even under a valid subpoena. In a civil case, you get texts by requesting them from the parties who sent or received them, subpoenaing non-parties who have copies, or forensically extracting them from a device. In a criminal investigation, prosecutors can reach carrier-held content, but generally need a warrant to do it.
Why Carriers Won’t Produce Message Content in Civil Cases
The Stored Communications Act, in Chapter 121 of Title 18, controls when a service provider can be forced to disclose electronic communications. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2702, electronic communication service providers are prohibited from voluntarily disclosing the contents of stored communications to the public. The statute’s exceptions cover law enforcement emergencies, the consent of the sender or recipient, and a handful of other narrow scenarios. A civil subpoena from a private party is not on that list.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2702 – Voluntary Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records
The practical effect: even a properly issued civil subpoena directed to Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile will almost certainly be refused as to message content. Attorneys who don’t grasp this early can waste months chasing production that will never come.
What You Can Get From a Carrier
The SCA draws a sharp line between content and non-content records. Content means the actual words of the message. Non-content records include subscriber information, phone numbers, session times, connection records, payment methods, and similar metadata. Non-content records can be obtained through a subpoena.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2703 – Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records
That metadata is more useful than it sounds. Call and message logs showing when a message was sent, to what number, and how frequently the two parties communicated can establish patterns that corroborate or undermine testimony. If a witness swears they had no contact with someone during a given month, records showing dozens of texts between them speak loudly, even without a single word of content.
How to Actually Get Texts in a Civil Case
The route that works in civil litigation is going through people, not carriers.
Requests to the Opposing Party
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34 allows any party to request that another party produce electronically stored information, including text messages, within the scope of discovery. The responding party must produce texts in their possession, custody, or control. That reaches messages stored on the phone itself, in cloud backups such as iCloud or Google, and copies synced to other devices like a tablet or laptop.
Subpoenas to Non-Parties
When someone outside the case has relevant messages — a witness, a business associate, a former employee — Rule 45 is the mechanism. The subpoena must specify what is being sought and cannot impose an undue burden on the recipient.3LII / Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena A subpoena to a non-party individual can reach the messages on that person’s device, which is the workaround for the SCA’s prohibition on carrier disclosure: you are getting the messages from the person, not the provider.
Any person who is at least 18 and not a party may serve the subpoena.3LII / Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena Professional process servers typically charge between $20 and $100 per job, with rates varying by location.
Preservation Letters
Text messages disappear. Phones auto-delete old threads by default, cloud backups roll over, and people who anticipate a lawsuit sometimes wipe their devices. A preservation letter is a formal notice that litigation is anticipated and relevant data must not be destroyed. Send one the moment a dispute becomes foreseeable, directed to the opposing party and to any relevant carriers or platforms.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e) governs the consequences when electronically stored information that should have been preserved is lost.4LII / Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 – Failure to Make Disclosures or to Cooperate in Discovery Sanctions can range from measures to cure prejudice up to adverse inference instructions and dismissal. In the 2024 case Safelite Group, Inc. v. Lockridge, a court granted a permissive adverse inference and awarded fees after a defendant failed to preserve texts following a cease-and-desist letter. Courts have little patience for defendants who let auto-delete run after litigation is on the horizon. On your own side, disable auto-delete, back up messages, and document that you did.
How Criminal Investigators Get Text Messages
Law enforcement has broader tools than private litigants, but the rules still turn on how long the messages have been stored.
Under 18 U.S.C. § 2703, for message content in electronic storage for 180 days or less, the government must obtain a warrant based on probable cause. For content stored more than 180 days, the statute technically allows a subpoena or court order with prior notice to the subscriber, though many federal circuits and Department of Justice policy favor a warrant regardless of storage period.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2703 – Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records
For non-content records — subscriber names, addresses, connection records, service dates, payment information, device identifiers — the government can use an administrative subpoena, a grand jury subpoena, or a court order.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2703 – Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records
State law can add restrictions. Several states have electronic privacy statutes that require warrants where the federal statute might permit a subpoena. Check both before choosing an approach.
Retention Windows and Encrypted Apps
Even when the law permits access, the data may already be gone. Retention periods for text message content at wireless providers are short. Windows vary by carrier, but some major providers keep content for only a few days, while others may hold it for roughly 90 days. Non-content metadata sticks around longer, sometimes a year or more. A subpoena or warrant that arrives months after the fact often finds the content already purged. Timing is not a detail here; it is the whole game.
Encrypted messaging platforms create a different problem. Apps like WhatsApp use end-to-end encryption. As WhatsApp puts it, “no one outside of the chat, not even WhatsApp, can read or share the content of end-to-end encrypted messages.”5WhatsApp Help Center. About End-to-End Encryption iMessage and Signal work on the same principle. A subpoena to the platform for content yields nothing, because the platform does not hold the decryption keys. The provider can produce account registration information, IP addresses, and connection timestamps, but not the messages themselves.
Forensic Extraction From the Device
When carrier records are unavailable and app-level encryption blocks platform access, the remaining option is pulling the messages off a phone. Digital forensics specialists can sometimes recover deleted messages from a device’s storage by accessing unallocated space or database log files. Techniques range from file-system extraction on jailbroken iPhones to hardware-level methods on Android devices. Physical possession of the device is usually required, and costs can run from a few hundred to several thousand dollars depending on complexity.
In criminal cases, law enforcement commonly uses tools such as those made by Cellebrite. In civil cases, a party may need to retain a private forensics firm and present findings through expert testimony. Where the device is held by the opposing party, a court order or stipulated protocol for forensic imaging is typically required.
Getting Text Messages Admitted at Trial
Obtaining texts is only half the job. Three evidentiary hurdles derail most cases: authentication, hearsay, and chain of custody.
Authentication
Federal Rule of Evidence 901 requires the offering party to produce evidence sufficient to support a finding that the message is what they claim it is.6LII / Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Evidence Rule 901 – Authenticating or Identifying Evidence For texts, that usually means showing who sent the message, from what phone number, and that the message has not been altered. Testimony from a participant in the conversation is the simplest route. Carrier metadata and device records corroborate.
Screenshots alone invite challenges because they are easy to fabricate. Forensic extraction reports, carrier-produced records, or hash values verifying that a file is unchanged are stronger. Federal Rule of Evidence 902(14) allows certified records from an electronic process to be self-authenticating when accompanied by a written certification from a qualified person, which means a forensic examiner’s certified extraction report can come in without live testimony about the extraction itself.7LII / Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Evidence Rule 902 – Evidence That Is Self-Authenticating
Hearsay
Text messages are out-of-court statements, and are hearsay when offered to prove the truth of what they say. Several exceptions routinely get them in.
The most common is the opposing party’s statement rule under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2). A text written by the other side is not hearsay when offered against that party. In practice, this covers the bulk of text-message evidence, because litigants usually want the other side’s own words.
When the sender is not a party, other exceptions may apply. The business records exception under Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6) can cover carrier-produced logs and metadata, though user-generated content inside those records may need a separate exception. Excited utterances, present sense impressions, and statements against interest also come into play depending on the circumstances.
Chain of Custody
Courts expect proof that the evidence has not been tampered with between collection and trial. For forensically extracted messages, that means documenting who handled the device, when the extraction occurred, what tools were used, and how the data was stored. For carrier-produced records, the custodian’s certification typically satisfies the requirement. Screenshots by a party are the weakest link, and courts increasingly question them without corroborating forensic evidence.
State Law and Cross-Border Complications
The SCA sets a federal floor. States layer additional protections on top. Some state electronic privacy statutes require warrants for categories of data the federal statute would allow through a subpoena. Others impose stricter notice requirements or broader definitions of protected content. The same request can succeed in one state and fail in another.
Evidence rules also vary. State courts apply their own rules of evidence, which may treat authentication or hearsay exceptions for digital communications differently than the federal rules. Some states have specific rules addressing electronic evidence; others handle it case by case.
When parties or data span multiple states, a subpoena issued in one state may need to be domesticated in the state where the carrier or custodian is located. That means complying with the procedural rules of both jurisdictions, and cross-border friction is one of the most common sources of delay in getting text-message evidence produced.