Illinois Keeps ABA Ownership Doctrine, Adds Key Exemptions

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS – Illinois will keep the doctrine that only licensed practitioners may own applied behavior analysis businesses, after an effort to repeal it fell short this spring. In contrast, a cleanup bill to the 2022 Behavior Analyst Licensure Act passed in the General Assembly.

Senate Bill 712, which won final passage on May 21, 2026, preserves Section 150 of the Behavior Analyst Licensure Act, the corporate practice of medicine (CPOM) provision that requires every owner of a healthcare company, including ABA companies, to be a licensed practitioner. The spirit of the state’s CPOM doctrine is to protect clinicians and patients from non-licensed owners influencing care and operating under professionally regulated structures subject to Illinois oversight. The bill clarifies who qualifies. Alongside licensed behavior analysts (LBAs) and licensed assistant behavior analysts (LABAs), it brings in related service professionals, including occupational therapists, speech therapists, and physical therapists. The Act does not restrict behavior analysts from combined practice with other licensed therapists under the state’s Professional Service Corporation (PSC) Act. It also writes a new patient-protection clause into the unlicensed-practice section of the Act and exempts public and charter schools and tax-exempt nonprofits from the ownership rule. What it does not do is repeal Section 150 or move the deadline. For-profit practices with non-licensed owners still have until January 15, 2027, to divest and, for some, consider creating a management service organization that can contract with the licensed practitioner-owned professional service company.

From Repeal Bid to Compliance

The fight began as an attempt to scrap the ownership requirement outright. In February 2026, lawmakers filed twin bills, Senate Bill 3807 and House Bill 5171, that would have repealed Section 150 and replaced it with language barring any unlicensed owner, officer, or agent from making clinical decisions about patient care. Both drew support from the Illinois Providers for ABA Access and Quality (IPAAQ), a state trade group, and from the Council of Autism Service Providers (CASP). There was opposition from most of the state’s licensed-practitioner-owned ABA providers, other licensed practitioner associations, and most state government departments, including the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR), the state’s healthcare licensing and CPOM compliance government entity. IDFPR was concerned that repeal would weaken the integrity and enforceability of the state’s professional regulatory framework.

Neither advanced. The companion bills were re-referred to the committee on March 27, 2026, the chambers’ deadline for moving legislation, which in practice ended them for the session. Both repeal bills stalled there.

That outcome did not satisfy the repeal camp. At an April 22 news conference at the Capitol, Thompson said SB 712 still “forces every ABA provider in Illinois to restructure so only licensed behavior analysts hold ownership,” The Center Square reported. Matthew Croke, a Park Ridge father of an autistic daughter, warned the disruption would be “far-reaching.” Glickman said providers would close or cut services if the language were not changed. The sponsor, Loughran Cappel, told the Senate the measure would clean up state law so service disruptions would not occur.

Senator Meg Loughran Cappel worked on other non-ownership service-access concerns with the ABA through a different vehicle. In April, she took SB 712, a dormant shell bill, and replaced its contents with ownership exemptions for public and charter schools and tax-exempt nonprofits, and adding occupational therapists to the practitioners the Act does not restrict, makes it a violation of the unlicensed-practice rules for any owner or officer to make clinical decisions without a license, and amends the Professional Service Corporation and Professional Limited Liability Company Acts to add applied behavior analysis to the related professions that can combine in a single practice so that behavior analysts can co-own with other licensed therapists.

The Senate adopted the amendment and passed the bill 57-0 on April 16. The House followed on May 21, voting 107 to 2 with two members present, completing the bill’s passage through the General Assembly. The 104th General Assembly has since adjourned, and providers that have not yet begun compliance will now begin their compliance work.

What Section 150 Requires

Section 150 is a single paragraph of standard, long-standing, and well-accepted state CPOM language that was originally enacted in 1938. It bars any healthcare direct service company, including those providing ABA services, from operating unless every member, partner, shareholder, director, officer, and holder of an ownership interest holds a valid Illinois license. In practice, that means licensed behavior analysts and assistant behavior analysts, under the state’s PSC Act, can be co-owners with and employ other related service professionals, such as speech, occupational, and physical therapists; psychologists and social workers do not qualify to co-own with a behavior analyst. IDFPR began issuing behavior analyst licenses on January 15, 2025, which started a 24-month compliance clock. The compliance deadline is January 15, 2027.

The requirement makes Illinois an outlier. Together with New York, it is one of only two states that expressly require ABA businesses to be owned by licensed behavior analysts (and LABA and other related service professionals added in May 2026), according to a March 2026 alert from the law firm Holland & Knight. Most states have no comparable rule.

Within the U.S., there are 33 states with CPOM doctrines. In Illinois, the provision arrived almost as a byproduct. When the Behavior Analyst Licensing Act passed in 2022, with backing from Autism Speaks, the goal was access: licensing Illinois behavior analysts so they could enroll as Medicaid providers and reach children who could not otherwise get care. Section 150’s ownership clause came packaged with that licensing framework, as had been applied to all newly licensed healthcare practitioners in the past. Many of the companies it now governs were built years, in some cases decades, before the rule existed.

What Compliance Means and Costs to Providers

IDFPR holds the licensed practitioner responsible for compliance with both the ownership (CPOM/Section 150) and business structure (PSC Act) requirements. For ABA companies to comply, they must prove to IDFPR that they operate as a professional service corporation, as either a professional limited liability company or a professional corporation, that ownership includes approved licensed practitioner types, and that they are registered as a professional corporation with IDFPR.

A large majority of Illinois’ small and medium-sized ABA companies are owned only by licensed practitioners. Most will pay a small fee to IDFPR and the Secretary of State to amend their current articles of incorporation to become a professional corporation. Some of these providers have reported reasonable to no legal fees for compliance. However, more complex business structures and non-licensed owners will have higher legal fees.

For companies not already solely owned by licensed practitioners, compliance means divesting all non-licensed owners and amending its articles of incorporation with the Secretary of State to designate it as a professional service corporation. Divested owners can consider creating a state-approved management service organization that enters into a business operations agreement with the direct professional service company. In addition to the fees mentioned above, there will be legal fees for drafting divestment agreements and, if needed, for establishing a management service organization and related agreements with the direct service company. The restructuring itself, Rebecca Thompson, a BCBA-D who leads IPAAQ, stated, runs into tens of thousands of dollars per practice in legal, entity-formation, credentialing, and payer-recontracting costs, money that does not reach clinical care.

Root also states that, regardless of a provider’s current business structure and path to compliance, an important factor is avoiding any change to the ABA company’s EIN. This is important to allow providers to amend their current payer contracts to reflect the new professional corporation designation without requiring new contracts and to reduce legal fees. Unfortunately, more involved business structures with non-licensed owners might find this difficult.

The mechanics are involved, covering entity conversion, ownership changes, tax identifiers, and possible payer re-contracting, and BreakingNewsABA covers them step by step in a companion guide. What matters for the ownership question is simpler: the clinical entity must ultimately be owned by licensed practitioners, and getting there carries real costs, especially for providers with non-licensed owners.

How many companies are exposed is hard to pin down. A survey by CASP that drew 48 qualifying responses from Illinois providers found that licensed behavior analysts did not fully own 60%, 30% were unsure, and 10% were unsure, Acuity reported. In late December 2025, trade groups estimate roughly 140 to 150 ABA companies operate in Illinois.

On the flip side, the Illinois Autism Insurance Coalition surveyed its 50 ABA company participants, showing that 47% were LBA-owned, and an additional 9% were owned by both LBAs and other related service professionals, totaling 56% already compliant with ownership requirements. The survey also showed that an additional 18% were LBA-owned by non-licensed owners, and only 9% were non-licensed. As of June 2026, the Coalition states that it has reached out to 198 ABA providers in the state.

For many providers, the real squeeze comes earlier than the statutory deadline. The Coalition, which has spent three years briefing providers on compliance, says practices that bill Medicaid will likely need to be restructured by mid-to-late August 2026, several months ahead of the January 15, 2027, cutoff, to avoid a gap in payment or services once the rule takes full effect. The Coalition frames that timing as practical guidance rather than a separate legal deadline, but for Medicaid-dependent clinics, it effectively moves the clock up.

The Deadline That Didn’t Move

The state professional association, the Illinois Association for Behavior Analysis (ILABA), actively opposed the repeal bills. SB 712 cleared the legislature on May 21. As of publication, the official record showed no further action: the bill has now been sent to Governor JB Pritzker for signature and would take effect immediately upon becoming law. Repeal advocates warn that other states adopting behavior-analyst licensing, California among them, could inherit the same CPOM dynamic that produced Section 150. For Illinois, the near-term math is simpler. Section 150’s deadline has not moved: for-profit owners who are not licensed behavior analysts have until January 15, 2027, to divest or restructure, whatever the Governor decides.

The Coalition provides weekly lunch-and-learn sessions on compliance. Providers can learn more at https://ilasd.com/cpom/.

AT A GLANCE

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