Health Occupations - State Board of Massage Therapy Examiners - Revisions
Summary
SB0419 revises Maryland’s laws governing massage therapy licensure and the State Board of Massage Therapy Examiners. The bill removes the planned transition date that would have required all practitioners to be licensed by November 1, 2026, and instead allows individuals already registered by the Board to continue practicing beyond that date. It also updates the education and qualification standards for licensure, including clarifying acceptable accreditation for in-state and out-of-state massage therapy programs and allowing certain out-of-state applicants to supplement missing contact hours with approved coursework, continuing education, or documented hands-on experience.
The bill also makes several administrative and regulatory changes. It repeals obsolete registration qualifications, ends the requirement that a specific administrative penalty be subject to certain hearing provisions, and changes the rules for reinstating expired licenses or registrations and reactivating inactive status. In particular, former registered massage practitioners who miss the five-year reinstatement window must now meet the current licensing requirements for a new license, and inactive registrants who wait more than five years to reactivate must also satisfy new-license requirements. The act takes effect July 1, 2026.
Impact
The bill amends multiple sections of the Health Occupations Article, specifically §§ 6-301, 6-302, 6-305, 6-306, and 6-306.2, affecting who may practice massage therapy in Maryland and under what credentials. It preserves the Board’s authority over licensing, registration, criminal history checks, fees, reinstatement, and reactivation, while tightening and clarifying education and equivalency standards for applicants, especially those trained out of state. It also eliminates the creation of any new initial registrations for registered massage practitioners after October 1, 2024, while directing the Board to convert existing registrations to licenses under Board regulations.
Sentiment
The bill appears to have been broadly noncontroversial and received unanimous support in both chambers, passing the Senate 43-0 and the House 129-0. The absence of recorded committee transcript opposition and the unanimous floor votes suggest general agreement that the measure was a technical or regulatory update to modernize massage therapy licensing rules rather than a major policy dispute.
Contention
No formal opposition is reflected in the available voting history or committee materials. The main policy choices embedded in the bill are administrative rather than ideological: whether to preserve existing registered practitioners beyond the prior transition date, how strictly to treat out-of-state education and experience, and how to handle reinstatement and reactivation after long lapses. Any potential concern would likely have centered on professional standards, reciprocity for out-of-state applicants, and the burden of converting existing registrants to licensure, but those issues did not produce recorded contention in the available materials.