Guide

Selling a course into states you are not licensed in

Summary

Selling an online course to buyers in states where you hold no license turns on what the course does rather than where the buyer sits. State practice acts define practice by activity (assessment, diagnosis, treatment) and sometimes by a professional relationship with a person; the two quoted here reach services offered to the public, and only one carves out teaching. A course that teaches material and assesses nobody is the design farthest from those activities. Individual feedback, an intake, or a treatment plan carries it inside them.

By Gale Editorial · Updated 2026-09-02. Every figure cited to a dated source. How we write.

What a license attaches to

A license attaches to an activity, and the statutes say so in their own words. California defines the practice of psychology as rendering or offering to render to individuals, groups, organizations, or the public any psychological service involving the application of psychological principles, methods, and procedures, and it defines psychotherapy separately as the use of psychological methods in a professional relationship to assist a person 1. The first definition reaches the public by name; the second turns on a relationship with a person.

Washington puts both halves in one section. Its psychology act lists services to individuals, families, groups, organizations, and the public, names diagnosis and treatment of mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders among them, and then says the definition does not include the teaching of principles of psychology for accredited educational institutions or the conduct of research 2. That exclusion is written around institutions, so a solo clinician selling a course from their own site does not land inside it cleanly. The drafters treated teaching and treating as different acts.

California's marriage and family therapy definition is keyed to psychotherapeutic and family-systems methods used to assess, evaluate, and treat relational issues, emotional disorders, behavioral problems, and mental illness 3. Across the three definitions the trigger is the act (assessing, diagnosing, treating, applying psychological methods) and, in one of them, the relationship.

None of them turns on how many people the service reaches, and two of them name the public outright, so selling to the public is not by itself what keeps a course outside them. Your own state may word its teaching exemption differently or write none at all, so read your practice act before you price anything.

Which state's law applies when the buyer is somewhere else

The buyer's state, whenever the thing you are doing is practice. The Counseling Compact states the ordinary rule plainly: counselors must have a license or a privilege to practice in the state where the client is located 4. Client location is the rule under everything in cross-state clinical work, and it does not soften because the delivery is asynchronous or the money arrived through a course platform.

But that rule presupposes a client. Somebody who buys a recorded course is a buyer, and whether the sale also produced a client is what the activity definitions decide. A question like telehealth into Kentucky starts after that point, with work everyone agrees is practice; a course raises the earlier question of whether any practice happened at all.

The moment a course collects a buyer's symptoms and hands back something individual about them, that earlier question is answered and the buyer's state is in charge.

What keeps a course on the teaching side

Keeping it away from the activities the statutes name, which in a course design comes down to four rules: no individualized assessment of a buyer, no plan written for one person's condition, no private clinical back-and-forth, and no clinical record. This is a reading of the statutory language above. No board ruling applying a practice act to a course was found while sourcing this page, so it is the reading a cautious practice designs against before a lawyer ever sees the product.

  • Intake forms that collect symptoms, history, or a medication list turn a buyer into someone you have assessed. A registration form asking for a name and an email does not.
  • Feedback about one person's own situation is individual whatever the medium. Answering a question about the material in a group session is a different act from answering it about the asker.
  • Live one-to-one time is the hardest line to hold, because it is where a course starts to resemble a session. Group office hours keep the room plural.
  • Records are evidence of a relationship. A course that keeps progress notes on its buyers has documented the thing it says it does not do.

But format alone will not carry this. Every definition quoted here turns on the activity, one of them on a relationship as well, and none of them mentions whether a video was recorded in advance. Recording helps in the practical sense that it makes those four things harder to do by accident, and in no sense beyond that.

Marketing sits under a different body of law

Licensure law and advertising law answer separate questions, and the compact says as much about itself: the Counseling Compact does not regulate advertising in the member states 4. So neither a compact privilege nor the teaching-side design above says anything about what a sales page may claim. Two lookups cover the board's side of that question. Read your own board's advertising rule, and read your own practice act for what it says about protected titles. Federal and state consumer-protection law reaches health claims in advertising as well, and it is its own lookup.

The sales page is also the part a board can read without asking anyone for records. Copy promising that a program will treat a buyer's anxiety describes treatment, and it describes it in the buyer's state, whatever the curriculum contains. Copy describing the material, who it is for, and what a buyer will be able to do afterwards describes teaching.

Write the sales page after the course, out of what the course contains.

The compacts are narrower than they look

A compact moves clinical practice across state lines for people who already practice independently, and it does not change what counts as practice. The Counseling Compact extends a privilege only to a counselor holding an unencumbered license to independently diagnose, assess, treat, and practice at the highest level 4. That is a description of clinical work.

A course that assesses nobody needs no privilege. A program that assesses somebody is practice, and a privilege covers that practice only in the states where the compact is live and only for the profession it was written for.

The rollout is smaller than the enactment count suggests. The compact's own map separates the states that have enacted it into law, 38 on that page, from the shorter list that has completed the technical and regulatory steps necessary for implementation, including secure data sharing and system testing 5. The compact's FAQ put the operating set at Arizona, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Ohio as of April 20, 2026 4. Those two pages disagreed about the live count on the day both were read, so carry any figure here with its date attached and check the map yourself before relying on it.

Ethics does not stop at the format

Professional ethics follow the work into whatever medium it happens in. The NASW Code of Ethics applies its standards the same way whether an interaction happens in person or through technology 6. So the questions a course raises about competence, boundaries, and what a buyer reasonably believes they bought do not disappear because the delivery is a video.

The practical form that takes is a disclosure the buyer reads before paying. Say what the course is, say that buying it creates no clinical relationship, and say that no part of it is individual care. Then hold the line in the discussion threads, which is where the promise usually breaks.

What to do before enrollment opens

Pull your own state's practice act first and read the definition section together with any exemption printed near it or inside it. Then pull your board's advertising rule. Write the disclosure and put it on the sales page above the checkout button. Last, decide what happens when a buyer emails a personal clinical question, because one will.

California's psychology definitions sit at Business and Professions Code Section 2903 1 and its marriage and family therapy definition at Section 4980.02 3; Washington's are at RCW 18.83.010 2. Search your own state's code for your profession's chapter, then read the definitions and any section headed exemptions or exceptions. Washington's teaching carve-out sits inside the definition itself, and another state's may sit in either place or nowhere.

Reply to the personal clinical question the same way every time: point back to the material, decline to apply it to the person, and say that individual advice would need a clinician licensed where they are. Keep the reply out of a chart, because a course has none.

The course is a startup cost before it is revenue, so production time, the platform fee, and the support hours that arrive with the first buyers belong in the startup budget as their own line, priced against the caseload hours those same weeks would otherwise have carried.

Common questions

It depends on what the course does with the buyer, and the practice definitions decide it. State acts key licensure to assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and sometimes a professional relationship with a person; the California and Washington acts reach services offered to the public, so audience alone settles nothing. A recorded course that teaches material and assesses nobody is the design farthest from those activities. Confirm it against your own state's definition section, because the wording varies.

Group calls about the material are further from the practice definitions than one-to-one time is, and the risk lives in what gets said on them. Answering a question about the curriculum keeps the room plural. Answering a question about one caller's symptoms, history, or medication is individual work performed where that caller is sitting. Decide the rule before the first call and say it out loud at the start.

A compact privilege is built for clinical practice, and the Counseling Compact grants one only to a counselor already holding an unencumbered license to independently diagnose, assess, treat, and practice at the highest level. Nothing in that describes teaching. It also operates in fewer states than have enacted it, so the practical reach on any given day is smaller than the enactment map suggests. Check the current status before counting on it.

A disclaimer describes the product; it does not change what the product does. If the course assesses a buyer, plans for a buyer, or treats a buyer, the disclaimer contradicts the record it sits on top of. Written to match a course that genuinely teaches, the disclosure earns its place: it tells the buyer what they are getting and gives you a script to send.

Advertising sits under different law from licensure, and the Counseling Compact says outright that it does not regulate advertising in member states. So the design of the course settles the licensure question and leaves the claims question open. Start with two documents: your board's advertising rule, and your own practice act read for what it says about protected titles. Consumer-protection law reaches health claims as well. Read all of it before the copy is written.

Answer the material, not the person. Point back to the lesson that covers the topic, say that individual advice would need a clinician licensed where the buyer lives, and stop there. Keep the reply identical every time so the same line holds under pressure, and open no chart on the buyer, because a course produces no clinical record and should not start one.

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References

  1. 1.California Legislature (2025). Business and Professions Code Section 2903. California Business and Professions Code (Chapter 6.6, Psychologists). link ✓California's statutory definition of the practice of psychology (applying psychological principles, methods, and procedures to understand, predict, and influence behavior) and its separate definition of psychotherapy as psychological methods used within a professional relationship, cited as one state's activity-and-relationship trigger rather than a national rule.
  2. 2.Washington State Legislature (1994). RCW 18.83.010 — Definitions. Revised Code of Washington, Chapter 18.83 (Psychologists). linkWashington's inclusion of diagnosis and treatment of mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders in the practice of psychology, and the same section's express exclusion of the teaching of principles of psychology for accredited educational institutions and the conduct of research, cited as one vetted state example of a written teaching exclusion.
  3. 3.California Legislature (2021). Business and Professions Code Section 4980.02. California Business and Professions Code (Chapter 13, Marriage and Family Therapists). link ✓California's definition of the practice of marriage and family therapy as psychotherapeutic and family-systems methods used to assess, evaluate, and treat relational issues, emotional disorders, behavioral problems, and mental illness, cited as a second license class keyed to the same activity trigger.
  4. 4.Counseling Compact Commission (2026). Counseling Compact — Frequently Asked Questions. Counseling Compact Commission official site (counselingcompact.gov). link ✓The compact's client-location rule (a license or privilege is required in the state where the client is located), its eligibility threshold of an unencumbered license to independently diagnose, assess, treat, and practice at the highest level, its statement that the compact does not regulate advertising in the member states, and its dated April 20, 2026 snapshot of the states between which the compact was then operating.
  5. 5.Counseling Compact Commission (2026). Counseling Compact — Compact Map / Implementation Status. Counseling Compact Commission official site (counselingcompact.gov). link ✓The distinction between states that have enacted the Counseling Compact into law (38 on that page) and the smaller set that has completed the technical and regulatory steps necessary for implementation, cited as a changing rollout figure carrying an access-date hedge.
  6. 6.National Association of Social Workers (NASW) (2021). NASW Code of Ethics. National Association of Social Workers. link ✓The narrow point that social work's ethical standards apply identically whether an interaction happens in person or via technology, used to say the code follows the delivery format; not used as a licensure test.

https://www.gale.care/for-providers/se-teaching-vs-practicing-line · 6 sources. Competitor details are cited to dated public sources and maintained as they change; figures are estimates, not commitments. Synthetic demonstration.

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