Texas considered legislation to streamline licensure by endorsement for marriage and family therapists, and it did not pass. Texas endorsement requirements are unchanged, so applicants should plan for a full review unless the board confirms otherwise.
Texas matters out of proportion to its place on any list, because it is a large state with a large therapist population and a great many people considering a move there.
What happened
Legislation to streamline endorsement for marriage and family therapists was considered in Texas and did not pass. The reporting attributes the failure to reasons unrelated to the substance of the bill, which in practice usually means the calendar, competing priorities, or procedural timing rather than opposition to the idea.
The outcome for applicants is the same regardless of why. Texas endorsement requirements did not change.
Why a failed bill is not a verdict
It would be easy to file Texas as a state that rejected the reform. That would be a mistake, and this profession has the precise counterexample.
Kentucky's bill failed in 2025. The measure came back the following session as House Bill 459 and passed in April 2026, making Kentucky the first adoption of that year. A list of failed states written in mid-2025 would have included Kentucky and would have been actively misleading within twelve months.
So any record of a failure needs a date on it, and a reader needs to treat it as describing one session rather than a state's settled position.
Planning a Texas application
Assume the fuller endorsement process and confirm with the board. That generally means being ready to document graduate coursework and possibly supervised clinical experience, rather than relying on your existing license to stand in for both.
Start document retrieval early, particularly anything that depends on third parties: transcripts, and above all any supervision records that may need signatures from people you have not spoken to in years. Request primary source verification from every state that has licensed you on the first day, since it is the step you control least.
Keep watching
If Texas is a long-term plan rather than an immediate one, it is worth checking each legislative session for a renewed attempt. If a bill passes, confirm its effective date and whether applications filed before that date are processed under the old rules or the new ones.
Until then, the honest position is simple: Texas is open to endorsement applicants, and the application is the traditional one.
Where the traditional application gets stuck
The slow items are predictable. Supervised clinical hours documentation that needs a former supervisor's signature. Coursework review when course titles on an old transcript do not map cleanly to required content areas. And verification from any state that licensed you long ago, particularly if that board has since been reorganized.
Each of those is findable before you file. Contact former supervisors now rather than when the form is due, pull your transcript and compare it against the required content areas yourself, and list every license you have ever held so no verification request is forgotten.
An application assembled that way still takes longer than a streamlined one, but it avoids the long tail where a single missing signature holds an otherwise complete file for months.
Common questions
- Did Texas adopt Access MFTs?
- No. A bill was considered and did not pass, for reasons reported as unrelated to its substance. Existing endorsement requirements remain in force.
- Could Texas still adopt it later?
- Yes. Kentucky's bill failed in 2025 and passed in 2026. A failed bill says nothing permanent about a state, which is why it should always carry a date.
- Should I avoid applying to Texas?
- No. Texas has a working endorsement pathway. Plan for the fuller application rather than assuming the streamlined one.
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