I would not recommend carrying under an out of state license if you Texas CHL is suspended. The Penal Code allows the exception if you are carrying under a valid license issued under Chapter 411. This includes out of state licenses, so I think the state would claim your privilege from any state has also been suspended if your Texas CHL is.ralewis wrote:Something seems wrong with having your license suspended in TX but being able to carry on a non-resident license. I wonder how that would be received by the cop you explained that to.
This is one of the areas where working like a driver's license could work against us. Way back in the day, when people commonly had licenses from multiple states, Texas viewed your driver's license as suspended no matter where it was from if you had a suspended license in Texas. Now that we are forced into just one state for a DL, the law still forbids issuing a license in Texas if it is suspended elsewhere. Even today, if an officer ran your name and got a suspended Texas DL, he would charge you with DWLI even if you had a valid PA driver's license.
As an aside, the OP has made me think of a very interesting point. I am not sure the average cop recognizes that a Texas resident can carry on an out of state license to begin with. I doubt the average cop would recognize one if given it. I don't think there is any way to validate the out of state license in a reasonable amount of time (I think you would need to send the other state an administrative message through NCIC, there is no general query on it I know of). I think I would tend to assume it is valid if it looked valid, but I was not aware of any paper licenses like that (I have never seen an out of state CHL on the street yet). I would not bet on the average cop accepting a paper CHL like that.
The good news is that if it came up in a shooting, the average cop would be more worried about the shoot being legal or not, and the carrying is for later on. But, this is most likely to come up during a traffic stop (especially the scenario of Texas CHL suspended, which he would get on his return), and I don't know how the cop would handle it.