The Collateral Consequences Resource Center recently reported on a  new Indiana law regulating consideration of conviction in occupational and professional licensure in that state.  This is part of a trend, with eight additional states recently enacting or about to  enact similarly progressive occupational licensing schemes.  New general laws regulating licensure are in place in Arizona, Illinois, Louisiana, and Massachusetts.  Similar bills have been enrolled and are on the governor’s desk for signature in Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, and Tennessee.  Arizona’s new 2018 licensing law follows on another law passed in that state in 2017 that authorized provisional licenses for individuals with a criminal record.  Massachusett’s new licensing law is part of a more general criminal justice reform bill.   Delaware and Connecticut have also recently loosened restrictions on licensing for cosmetology and related professions.

In California, AB 2138 is currently making its way through the legislature. The bill would reduce barriers to professional licensure for individuals with prior criminal convictions by limiting a regulatory board’s discretion to deny a new license application, or suspend or revoke an existing license, to cases where the applicant or licensee was formally convicted of a substantially related crime or subjected to formal discipline by a licensing board, with offenses older than five years no longer eligible for license denial or suspension or revocation with the exception of violent felonies, as currently established in statute.