The five rows below carry the operative statutory language verbatim, each quote pulled from the official code. This page is one state from the full state-by-state reference. Nothing here is legal, tax, or financial advice.
The five-part test in brief
Whether an ABA practice needs a professional entity is a stack of five questions. The licensing act is the gateway, because an unlicensed profession is generally not a professional service and an ordinary entity governs. The professional-entity statute supplies the form and the ownership rule that applies if that form is used. The scope definition decides whether ABA is actually inside that statute. The corporate-practice doctrine, a separate body of law that often lives in the medical practice act or case law rather than the entity statute, is usually what forces licensed ownership and pushes outside capital into a management company. And the fee-splitting and anti-remuneration rules constrain management-fee economics even where ownership is open. The rows below run those five against this state's actual code, quoting the operative language so the position rests on the statute.
Louisiana, provision by provision
Louisiana
Ownership open; no professional-corporation statute reaches ABAHolding: a non-licensee may wholly own a standard Louisiana LLC or corporation that delivers ABA. Louisiana's "professional corporation" is a term of art limited by statute to medical, dental, and law corporations, and no comparable chapter exists for behavior analysis.
Yes. Louisiana licenses Licensed Behavior Analysts, certifies State-Certified Assistant Behavior Analysts, and registers Line Technicians through the Louisiana Behavior Analyst Board under R.S. 37:3701 et seq. Every LBA applicant must also pass a Louisiana-specific jurisprudence examination, in addition to a board-approved national exam. The chapter carries a statutory termination date of July 1, 2028 under R.S. 37:3718 unless the legislature reauthorizes it.
Conclusion. ABA is a licensed profession in Louisiana, the gateway for the entity questions below, though as the next axis shows, no professional-entity statute in Louisiana currently reaches it.
Louisiana's Title 12 defines "professional corporation" not as a general category open to any licensed profession, but as a specific, closed cross-reference: only professional medical corporations formed under R.S. 12:901 and professional dental corporations formed under R.S. 12:981. A separate chapter, R.S. 12:801 et seq., governs professional law corporations. No parallel chapter exists for behavior analysts, psychologists generally, or most other licensed personal-service professions.
Conclusion. No professional-corporation statute in Louisiana reaches behavior analysis; the entire "professional corporation" concept in Louisiana law is limited by definition to medicine, dentistry, and law.
It does not, and unlike Kentucky's broad, condition-precedent-based definition or Massachusetts's ambiguous catch-all, Louisiana's definition is a direct cross-reference to two named chapters, medicine and dentistry, with no broader category language at all. There is no interpretive question here; the statute simply does not contemplate behavior analysis, psychology, counseling, or most other licensed professions as falling within "professional corporation" status.
Conclusion. ABA is outside Louisiana's professional-corporation framework entirely, a clean negative answer with no ambiguity.
Ownership. No ownership-by-law rule restricts who may hold equity in a Louisiana ABA practice. Louisiana's corporate-practice-of-medicine enforcement is genuinely strict, but it is medicine-and-dentistry-specific by statute, R.S. 12:901 requires Louisiana professional medical corporations to be formed and owned by currently licensed Louisiana physicians, and R.S. 37:776 separately bars dentists from sharing ownership with non-dentists. Neither statute, nor any identified parallel provision, extends that ownership restriction to behavior analysis.
Clinical control. Because ownership is unrestricted at the entity level for ABA, clinical control rests with the individually licensed behavior analyst under the Board's own scope, supervision, and disciplinary provisions, not with an entity-level ownership rule.
Conclusion. A non-licensee may wholly own a standard Louisiana LLC or corporation that employs licensed behavior analysts, state-certified assistant behavior analysts, and registered line technicians.
Louisiana's principal healthcare fee-splitting statute, R.S. 37:1745, prohibits payment for patient referrals, but its definition of "healthcare provider" and the list of boards it reaches, Medical Examiners, Chiropractic, Dentistry, Optometry, Physical Therapy, Psychologists, Nursing, Licensed Professional Counselors, Practical Nurse Examiners, and Pharmacy, does not include the Louisiana Behavior Analyst Board. Two related statutes, R.S. 46:438.2 (illegal remuneration) and R.S. 14:70.5 (fraudulent remuneration), are framed more broadly around healthcare fraud generally and should be confirmed directly for their application to ABA billing. Any ABA practice billing Louisiana Medicaid or commercial insurers remains fully subject to the federal Anti-Kickback Statute and Stark rules regardless of how the state statutes are read.
Conclusion. A management agreement should be priced at fair market value to satisfy the federal anti-kickback framework; R.S. 37:1745's referral-payment prohibition does not clearly reach behavior analysts by its own terms, though the broader illegal-remuneration statutes should be confirmed directly before finalizing a management-fee structure.
ABA is a licensed profession in Louisiana under R.S. 37:3701 et seq. (axis one), but Louisiana's "professional corporation" concept is a closed, defined term reaching only medical and dental corporations by direct statutory cross-reference, with a separate chapter for law, and no chapter exists for behavior analysis (axes two and three). Louisiana's genuinely strict corporate-practice-of-medicine enforcement is textually specific to medicine and dentistry and has not been extended to ABA, so ownership is open at the entity level (axis four). The state's primary healthcare referral-payment statute does not name the Behavior Analyst Board among the boards it covers, though the federal anti-kickback framework applies in full (axis five). Therefore a non-licensee may wholly own a standard Louisiana LLC or corporation that delivers ABA, notwithstanding Louisiana's reputation as a strict corporate-practice state for the professions its statutes actually name.
Outlook: how this verdict could change
Likelihood of change: Low for ownership; the bigger risk is elsewhere. No pending legislation has been identified that would create a professional-corporation chapter for behavior analysis or extend R.S. 37:1745's board list to include the Behavior Analyst Board. The far more consequential Louisiana-specific risk on this page is unrelated to entity structure: R.S. 37:3718's July 1, 2028 sunset of the entire licensing chapter.
What to watch. Legislative action on the R.S. 37:3718 sunset provision before its 2028 deadline, and any amendment to R.S. 12:902's professional-corporation definition or R.S. 37:1745's board list.
Disruption if it changes: Low for entity structure; High if the licensing chapter lapses. A realistic entity-structure change would be incremental. A lapse of the underlying licensing chapter itself would be a far more disruptive event, eliminating the credential this entire analysis depends on.
Where professional advice is essential, not optional
Verbatim statutory text is a starting point, not a conclusion. Statutes are amended, agencies issue rules that fill them in, and courts interpret them. Louisiana's reputation as a strict corporate-practice state is accurate for medicine and dentistry specifically, and it is a genuine trap to assume that reputation transfers automatically to every licensed profession in the state; it does not for behavior analysis under the statutes reviewed here. Use this page to locate the operative provisions and to speak from the source, then confirm the current text and citations against the official code and engage qualified Louisiana counsel before acting. Nothing here is legal, tax, or financial advice.
The provisions quoted here change and are interpreted by agencies and courts, and Louisiana's licensing chapter carries a statutory sunset date that makes ongoing legislative tracking especially important here. The official Louisiana code and qualified Louisiana counsel are the authoritative sources. Neither this page nor any secondary source should be relied on in place of direct verification and professional advice.