The act took effect upon passage. It was signed June 2, 2026. Only the individual license requirement is deferred to 2028. The facility deadline is live. Every quotation below is pulled from the enrolled act. Nothing here is legal, tax, or financial advice.
The short version
Colorado enacted House Bill 26-1425, the Applied Behavior Analysis Practice Act, on June 2, 2026. The coverage focused on one provision: on and after July 1, 2028, an individual may not practice applied behavior analysis without a license from a new Colorado Behavior Analyst Licensing Board. That is real, and it is two years away.
The provision nobody is discussing sits in a different title of the code entirely, in the child welfare licensing statute, and it is not two years away. It is a matter of weeks.
Read the two amended definitions side by side and the capture is obvious. Read only the press release and you will miss it completely.
What changed in the definition
Day treatment facility, C.R.S. 26-6-903(8)(a)(I)
AmendedThree changes, each small on its own. Together they pull center based ABA inside a statute written for child welfare facilities.
The prior definition reached a facility serving groups of five or more children. The amended definition reaches groups of three or more. A small clinic that sat safely below the threshold on May 1, 2026 may sit above it today without changing a thing about how it operates.
The amended text reaches a facility that provides "AT LEAST FOUR HOURS OF CARE BUT LESS THAN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OF CARE EACH BUSINESS DAY". This is the one provision that cuts in an operator's favor, and it is the first thing to check. A clinic delivering shorter daily blocks may fall outside. A full day center based program does not.
This is the change that does the work. The old definition required a structured program of psycho-social and behavioral treatment to prevent or reduce the need for placement of the child out of the home or community. That is a poor fit for applied behavior analysis, and it is why most ABA clinics never considered themselves day treatment facilities.
The amended definition requires a structured program "DESIGNED TO ASSESS, TREAT, OR PROMOTE THE BEHAVIORAL HEALTH OF AN INDIVIDUAL WHO IS AT LEAST THREE YEARS OLD BUT LESS THAN TWENTY-ONE YEARS OLD".
And the same act adds a new definition of behavioral health at C.R.S. 26-6-903(2.7), which expressly includes intellectual and developmental disabilities and autism spectrum disorder.
Conclusion. A center based ABA clinic delivering four or more hours a business day to three or more children between three and twenty is now described, almost word for word, by the amended definition of a day treatment facility.
The deadline, and why it is already running
C.R.S. 26-6-905(1.5), new
DeadlineThe act creates a transition rule for exactly the facilities it just captured, and it is written in a way that leaves very little room.
The test is a comparison between two dates. Were you outside the definition as it stood on May 1, 2026, and are you inside it as it stands now? If both are true, you had to apply by August 1, 2026.
One year after the application deadline, a captured facility operating without the license is operating unlawfully. The department may seek an injunction to close it under C.R.S. 26-6-918.
Section 23 of the act provides that it takes effect upon passage, except for four sections of the new licensing article, which are deferred to July 1, 2028. Section 24 attaches a safety clause. The bill was signed on June 2, 2026.
The four deferred sections are the individual license requirement, license renewal, supervision of assistant behavior analysts, and the unauthorized practice penalty. The facility provisions are not among them.
Conclusion. The July 1, 2028 date that dominated the coverage governs the individual practitioner license. It does not govern the facility deadline, and reading the two together is how an operator ends up late.
The trap inside the trap
The natural assumption is that a captured ABA clinic simply applies for the new ABA clinic license the same act creates. It cannot, because that license does not functionally exist yet.
New C.R.S. 26-6-909.5(1)(a)(I) directs the Department of Human Services to prescribe and publish standards for licensing and regulating applied behavior analysis clinics on or before July 1, 2029. Three years from now.
And the exclusion that would let a licensed ABA clinic escape the day treatment definition, at C.R.S. 26-6-903(8)(b)(III), is expressly conditioned on those standards existing:
No published standards means no licensed ABA clinics, which means the exclusion has nothing to operate on. A captured clinic in the interim is not licensed as an ABA clinic. It is licensed, if it is licensed at all, as a day treatment facility, under child welfare rules written for a different kind of institution.
Who is not captured
This is the other provision worth reading closely, because it is the one that saves a large part of the industry.
Part 9 does not apply to it. Home based, school based, and community based ABA sit outside the facility licensing regime entirely. This lands on center based clinics, and only on center based clinics.
So the exposure is not uniform across the Colorado market. It is concentrated in exactly the operators who invested in physical locations, which tends to mean the larger and better capitalised ones, and the ones most likely to be preparing for a transaction.
What day treatment licensure actually brings
A day treatment facility license under Part 9 is not a paperwork exercise. The amended statute reaches, among other things:
- Local zoning as a condition of licensure. C.R.S. 26-6-906 requires compliance with municipal and county zoning and land use regulations, and failure to comply is grounds for denial. A clinic operating in space zoned for professional offices rather than child care may discover the problem here first.
- Fingerprint based criminal history checks. C.R.S. 26-6-912 reaches the applicant, owners, employees, newly hired employees, licensees, and adults residing at the facility, against both Colorado Bureau of Investigation and Federal Bureau of Investigation records, plus child abuse and neglect registry checks.
- Change of ownership triggers a new investigation. Also under 26-6-912. This one matters if you are contemplating a sale.
- Negative licensing actions reach your families. Under C.R.S. 26-6-915, a facility notified of a negative licensing action must, within ten days, give the department the names and mailing addresses of the parents of every child in its care, and the department writes to them directly.
- Injunctive closure. C.R.S. 26-6-918 authorises the attorney general to seek an injunction against operating without a required license.
The eventual ABA clinic standards, when they arrive, are restricted by C.R.S. 26-6-909.5(3) to an enumerated list that includes restraint protocols under Article 20 of Title 26, immunization verification, medication storage, staffing ratios, record keeping, and the financial competence of the applicant.
What did not change, and it matters
Ownership. Nothing in HB26-1425 restricts who may own an ABA practice or an ABA clinic in Colorado. The act licenses individuals, through the new Article 247 of Title 12, and it licenses facilities, through Part 9 of Article 6 of Title 26. It creates no licensed ownership requirement, no professional entity mandate, and no divestment obligation.
A non licensee may still own a standard Colorado limited liability company that delivers applied behavior analysis. The corporate practice doctrine in Colorado remains medicine specific and does not reach behavior analysis. The entity decision in Colorado is unchanged.
This is worth stating plainly, because the instinct on reading a new licensure act is to assume the ownership rules moved with it. In Colorado they did not. The exposure created by this act is a facility exposure and a practitioner exposure, not an equity one.
The rest of the act, in brief
Article 247 of Title 12, and the Medicaid provision
2026C.R.S. 12-247-106 prohibits practising or offering to practise applied behavior analysis without a license, effective July 1, 2028. Licensure requires a current certification in good standing with a certifying entity and a fingerprint based criminal history check. A certifying entity is the Behavior Analyst Certification Board, the Qualified Applied Behavior Analysis Credentialing Board, or another national body identified by the new licensing board and accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies or the American National Standards Institute.
Unlicensed practice becomes a class 2 misdemeanor under C.R.S. 12-20-407(1)(a)(V)(Y).
C.R.S. 12-247-122 provides that a licensed behavior analyst or licensed assistant behavior analyst shall not practise unless covered by professional liability insurance in an amount the board sets by rule. Public employees covered by the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act are excepted. The amount is not yet known, because the board does not yet exist.
C.R.S. 12-247-104 creates a five member Colorado Behavior Analyst Licensing Board: three licensed behavior analysts, one licensed assistant behavior analyst, and one public member, appointed by the Governor. Initial appointments are due no later than one hundred eighty days after the effective date. The regulation of behavior analysts is scheduled for repeal on September 1, 2031, subject to sunset review.
New C.R.S. 25.5-4-436 requires the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing to reimburse for services delivered by a certified registered behavior technician. Subject to federal approval, it also permits reimbursement for a technician who is not yet certified, for one temporary period of not less than forty five days while pursuing certification.
The conditions are not trivial. Before billing, the technician must complete a name based judicial record check, complete all training required for certification, and complete abuse and neglect reporting training. The forty five day clock starts only when those are done. The billing entity must give the department quarterly rosters of its employed behavior technicians and their certification status. If the technician is not certified at the end of the period, the entity must stop requesting reimbursement.
C.R.S. 12-247-103(1)(c) expressly excludes diagnosis, psychological testing, psychotherapy, cognitive therapy, psychoanalysis, mental health counseling, practice with nonhumans, and business or organizational consulting including organizational behavior management. The scope of the new license is narrower than the scope of what many practices actually deliver, and the boundary will matter.
What an operator should actually do
- Answer the four hour question first. It is the only element of the definition that is genuinely within your control, and it is the difference between being captured and not.
- Then answer the headcount question. Three or more children, aged three to twenty, in the same program.
- Then compare yourself to the May 1, 2026 definition. If you were already a day treatment facility under the old text, C.R.S. 26-6-905(1.5) does not apply to you, and you should already hold the license. If you were not, and you are now, the transition rule is yours.
- Contact the Colorado Department of Human Services directly. The department has not, as of this writing, published guidance addressed to ABA operators on the day treatment capture. Do not wait for it. Your status is a question the department answers, not one a website answers.
- If you are approaching a transaction, treat this as a diligence item now. Change of ownership triggers a fresh investigation under 26-6-912, and an unlicensed captured facility is an injunction risk under 26-6-918. A buyer will find this.
Where professional advice is essential, not optional
Whether a particular clinic falls inside the amended definition is a question about your specific programme, your hours, your census, and your ages, applied to statutory language that no agency has yet interpreted through rulemaking. That is precisely the kind of question a statute cannot answer on its own. The provisions quoted here tell you where to look and let you speak from the source. They do not tell you where you stand. Engage qualified Colorado counsel, and confirm your status with the Colorado Department of Human Services. Nothing here is legal, tax, or financial advice.
HB26-1425 was signed on June 2, 2026 and the Department of Human Services and the new licensing board will both issue rules that fill it in. The enrolled act, the official Colorado code, the Colorado Department of Human Services, and qualified Colorado counsel are the authoritative sources. Neither this page nor any secondary source should be relied on in place of direct verification and professional advice.