SB 180: Limited Licensure for Some Massage Therapists

This bill passed the House 56-15 and passed the Senate 25-2. 

Want to become a massage therapist in Utah? You’ll have to do a bit of work to receive your license (a government permission slip). You must either graduate from an authorized massage school (spending around 4-6 months of full-time study and $13-15,000 on tuition and fees) or work as an apprentice for at least 12 months and 1,000 hours of supervised training.

But what if all you want to do, for example, is offer seated massages (such as you can find at the airport) where there are no oils used, no deep tissue massages performed, etc? Must a person pay all this money and spend all this time to perform a limited range of activities?

Senator Curt Bramble is sponsoring Senate Bill 180, which would create a new license for the practice of “limited massage therapy.” Under this level of licensure, no oils could be used, assessments performed, stretching done, or correction of muscular distortion performed. In short, such practitioners could only perform superficial massages designed for short-term relief (what some in the industry derisively refer to as a “fluff and buff”).

The bill is not unlike one from last year, also sponsored by Senator Bramble, allowing hairstylists to be exempted from the heavy burden of Utah’s cosmetology law if all they wanted to do was wash, dry, and style hair. And the overall trend of reform is consistent with Governor Cox’s first executive order, calling for a review of licensure laws to help “reduce barriers to working while still protecting the health, safety, and well-being of Utah residents.”

It is inevitable that many in the massage therapy industry — especially those connected to the schools that profit from the status quo that requires students to attend their institutions and pay their tuition — will claim that SB 180 will lead to health and safety problems. The same tactic was used by cosmetologists for last year’s bill. It was also the claim made by mechanics when Utah eliminated vehicle safety inspections. These are the predictable fear-based claims of those who are actually seeking to protect their industry from competition.

Utah’s labor shortage — especially in rural areas — demands that the Legislature ensure we reduce licensure burdens that arbitrarily restrict people’s ability to enter the workforce and safely provide services to those who want them. SB 180 is an important step in that direction.