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.
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.
Here are additional links to useful information and websites
Background And History
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.