State Legislation
The AMTA California Chapter, with the guidance and leadership of National AMTA, are in alignment to move towards a mandatory licensure over a voluntary certification process. This would put California in line with the vast majority of the rest of the country. We believe this is the crucial step forward for our profession and the safety of our patients and clients.
Why Should Massage Therapists Want a Mandatory State License
California has 482 municipalities (cities), 58 counties, and 256 cities, (just over half of them), currently require CAMTC (California Massage Therapy Council) for you to be a Certified Massage Therapist, to legally work within their cities. That means anyone in those 226 cities can call themselves a “massage therapist” and it is totally legal. No education, training, or requirements are necessary to practice massage, be it actual massage or under the guise of sex work and human trafficking.
1. Mandatory Requirement: Unlike our current voluntary certification system, licensure is mandatory. This ensures that only qualified individuals can use the title of massage therapist, safeguarding your reputation and the integrity of the field. With mandatory licensure, you are either a massage therapist or you are not.
2. Alignment with Healthcare Standards: Licensure will align massage therapy with other healthcare fields, implementing appropriate standards and requirements, similar to chiropractors, acupuncturists, and physical therapists. This will ensure our profession is treated with the respect it deserves. Massage is healthcare and we ARE healthcare workers. Our business is healthcare!
3. Protection Against Illicit Activities: Licensure will make it illegal for individuals to fraudulently use our title as a cover for illicit activities. Massage is Healthcare! We are not sex workers, nor are we in the business of human trafficking.
4. Industry Standard: California is one of only five states without licensure for massage therapists. 45 other states, D.C., and Puerto Rico require it.
5. Elevating the Profession: We aim to elevate our profession by ensuring it is overseen by departments that cover health and consumer affairs, rather than those that are under the auspice of vice and criminal activities.
6. Public Safety and Trust: Licensing guarantees that the public receives care from well-trained and vetted professionals, ensuring public trust and safety in the field. Our current system does not and cannot do that.
What Are We Doing?
As your government relations team, we are advocating to sunset the CAMTC and establish a full licensure board for our profession. We are working with the California Legislature’s Business and Professions Committee to advocate for a short extension to the CAMTC, as opposed to a full four-year extension. This will signal the legislature’s willingness to explore winding down the CAMTC and replacing it with a licensing board for our profession. If this does not happen during this session, we will still press for sunrising a mandatory licensing board for massage therapy.
Please note that we are in the early stages of this movement, and the specifics are still being developed.
You can watch AMTA’s address to the Business and Professions Committee here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/fQLHGHyq7t92MEdW7
If you are against moving towards mandatory licensure, please let us know your concerns and what it would take to get you to support licensure. We are your professional association and want to make sure your voice is heard.
If you would like to become personally involved, have questions or concerns, please contact our Government Relations Chair, Timothy Peckinpaugh at gr@amta-ca.org.
Thank you!
Join the Movement!
If you would like to join in our advocacy efforts to improve the regulation of Massage in California, please visit our Alert Sign-Up Page. Please note that the alert service is geographically sensitive: you will receive alerts for only those issues that will affect you (literally) where you live.
Find Your California Representative
https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/
Background:
A (Very) Brief History of the California Massage Therapy Act
A Brief History of AMTA-CA’s Legislative Efforts
Here are some links to useful information and websites:
Click here for the text of AB 2194, the bill containing to the Massage Therapy Act become law on January 1, 2017.
Click here for the current version of the Massage Therapy Act
Click here for the 2025 CAMTC Sunset Report. Be advised: This document is over 900 pages; it will take a while to load, let alone read.
To download application forms and get other information about CAMTC certification, you can go directly to the CAMTC website. The California Massage Therapy Council is the nonprofit public benefit corporation that issues statewide certificates to qualified massage professionals in California.