SB 993 allows limited behavioral clinician identification safeguards
Oct 11, 2026 edition · GC-2026-0222 · Published 2026-10-11 · Version 3 · Final
SB 993 permits limited clinician-identification omissions from required client notices in specified psychiatric and correctional settings. The clinician needs employer authorization and an individual safety concern, while clients retain a disclosed route to obtain enough information for a licensing-board complaint.
What happened
California enacted SB 993 on September 27 as Chapter 668. The four amended Board of Behavioral Sciences notice sections generally require the practitioner's full filed name, license or registration number, type, and expiration date when services begin. A safety-based exception permits discretion over those identifying fields in acute psychiatric hospitals, correctional treatment centers, and settings providing mental-health services to incarcerated people under local, state, or federal correctional authority. It covers the specified marriage and family therapy, educational psychology, clinical social work, and professional clinical counseling categories, rather than every clinical profession or outpatient setting.
The employing entity or agency must authorize that discretion. The setting must maintain an established process through which the client can request and obtain enough identification to file a board complaint, disclose that process in the notice, and preserve the notice in the client record. The underlying board-complaint notice remains required in at least 12-point type before services or as soon as practicably possible afterward, and delivery must be documented. Withholding information from the initial notice therefore does not permit blocking complaint access or dispensing with the notice and records requirements.
Scope and timing
- Authority status
- Final
- Applicability
- Potentially applicable
- Audience
- Health systems, Provider networks, Health-tech
- Jurisdiction
- California
- Recorded date
- 2027-01-01
- Date type
- effective
Why it matters
The exception preserves client complaint access and is not available in every therapy setting.
Recommended action
Review qualifying settings, authorization and records; retain the required board complaint notice and a workable identification request process.
Sources
- SB993 enacted final textOfficial · California Legislature · 2026-09-27 · Source review 2026-10-11
- California Constitution, Article IV section 8(c), official Assembly 2023–24 editionOfficial · California State Assembly · Source review 2026-10-14
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