- AMBP Provided template: https://images.magnetmail.net/images/clients/ABMP_MEM//attach/CAMTCSunsetAdvocacyTemplate.pdf
- AB1504 text: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1504
- Where to submit your letter: https://calegislation.lc.ca.gov/Advocates/faces/submitnote.xhtml
My long for letter:
Dear Assemblymembers and Senators,
My name is Suz Vera Burroughs. I am a board-certified massage therapist, continuing education provider, and collaborative care practitioner specializing in clinical massage, including myofascial, orthopedic, and integrative approaches for people living with chronic pain, trauma, and complex conditions. I urge you to sunset the California Massage Therapy Council (CAMTC) and establish a state licensing board that centers due process, public health, tiered licensure, and parity with other healthcare providers.
In collaborative care with licensed prescribers, psychiatrists, and palliative teams, I experience daily the structural failures and institutional harm perpetuated by CAMTC. These failures directly impact client safety and professional viability.
CAMTC was never designed to serve professionals working at the intersection of touch, trauma, and therapeutic care. Its framework fails to define or support clinical massage as a pathway and has not evolved to reflect the growing body of trauma-informed, collaborative, and interdisciplinary care models. This exclusion actively marginalizes providers whose work requires clinical reasoning, outcome tracking, and integration with broader healthcare systems like electronic health records (EHRs) or SOAP documentation. It offers no clinical scope of practice, no structured pathways for advanced credentials, and no meaningful due process. It remains a voluntary, private nonprofit with quasi-regulatory power and opaque internal practices. This is unacceptable in a state leading the country in integrative, trauma-informed, and healthcare innovations.
Despite my credentials and commitment to safety and scope, I continue to be harassed and discriminated against by the City of Oakland’s Special Activities Office, which regulates my work like gambling or adult entertainment, not healthcare. These enforcement practices disproportionately affect women, people of color, therapists with disabilities, and low-income therapists—those most often working in community-based care with underserved populations. I’ve had to defend my profession, integrity, and safety in rooms where I am treated as a suspect, not a provider. This is not regulation—it is profiling. Law enforcement has even called my office under false pretenses, attempting to entrap me into offering sex work services rather than responding to my repeated reports of being solicited by members of the public. My fear of advertising to the public, taking new clients without strong referrals, and my pleas for protection are ignored while I am treated like a criminal for simply trying to work with care and integrity.
Physicians and mental health practitioners often question my qualifications because CAMTC certification does not translate or communicate clinical rigor. I am not seen as a peer, despite my education and board certification. CAMTC’s voluntary, non-transferable certification only compounds this professional bias.
I filed a formal complaint with CAMTC regarding serious student safety concerns at the dominant massage school in California, NHI. My report was ignored, and I had to pay the student loans despite having to leave the school for my own safety before finishing my program there. That school remains in good standing. One of the students impacted by the neglect and negligence by the school that I reported later died by suicide, and to my knowledge, no action was ever taken. CAMTC’s silence in the face of harm is inexcusable. This is not an isolated failure; it reflects a broader pattern of inaction and unwillingness to regulate schools, investigate abuse, or uphold student safety—leaving learners vulnerable and the public at risk.
My work demands a high level of fluency in anatomy, physiology, pathology, and collaborative documentation. And yet, under CAMTC, my role is officially classified as "not healthcare." This puts me in a deeply compromising position—held liable for client medical data and outcomes related to clinical work while being denied the recognition and protections afforded to other licensed healthcare providers and their patients.
This exclusion has real consequences: my years of hands-on clinical experience are not recognized in nursing school applications or broader healthcare credentialing pathways. It also restricts massage therapists from participating in public health initiatives, Medicaid-funded care, hospital-adjacent services, and community health programs—further separating us from the systems of care we work within every day. CAMTC and NCBTMB are not recognized in nursing school applications or broader healthcare credentialing pathways. CAMTC’s structure has not only stunted my professional mobility, it has devalued the knowledge and rigor required to safely work with complex clients in medical and behavioral care environments. We are also being written out of eligibility to bill health insurance for mechanotherapy procedure codes, further erasing our contributions to rehabilitative care and collaborative health teams.
CAMTC’s lack of public transparency, accountability to state oversight bodies, and failure to meet national standards further widens this gap. Unlike 45 other states that have proper licensure models requiring continuing education, CAMTC operates outside the transparency laws that apply to state boards.
Additionally, CAMTC certification is not recognized in most other states, severely limiting the portability of our credentials. California massage therapists who move must often pay for additional education and testing to practice legally elsewhere. Within California, we face a confusing patchwork of local regulations, redundant background checks, and inconsistent permitting requirements that undermine our ability to practice across city or county lines. Sole practitioners are especially burdened by these duplicative costs and bureaucratic hurdles, which serve no clear public safety function.
Meanwhile, CAMTC charges high certification fees, despite massage therapists earning significantly less than the median income. As a board-certified continuing education provider, I have also found it nearly impossible to maintain a viable CEU business because CAMTC imposes no continuing education requirements for certificate renewal. This lack of ongoing professional development undermines public safety and de-incentivizes advanced training, setting our profession back while eroding the legitimacy of high-quality education offerings. It is unacceptable that those tasked with serving the public are burdened by excessive fees while CAMTC leadership receives compensation far exceeding that of the governor.
You can read more about my perspective and proposed solutions through my Change.org petition: https://www.change.org/p/establish-a-licensed-clinical-massage-therapist-lcmt-qualification-in-california I advocate for a multi-tiered licensing structure that honors and distinguishes advanced clinical training and scope—just as other healthcare professions do. This would also create meaningful career pathways for massage therapists who wish to transition into nursing, physical therapy, or other allied health fields—opportunities currently blocked by the non-recognition of our experience and education. and scope—just as other healthcare professions do.
We need a state board with a clear scope of practice, true licensure, reciprocity, and due process. Licensure should reflect what many of us actually do: clinical massage, integrative manual therapy, myofascial release, rehabilitative soft tissue work, and collaborative interventions for chronic pain, psychiatric distress, and trauma.
If California is serious about addressing human trafficking, expanding access to ethical care, and supporting its workforce, we must stop regulating bodyworkers like suspected criminals and start honoring our roles as healthcare providers.
I support the sunsetting of CAMTC and urge you to replace it with a transparent, state-run board that aligns with public health priorities and reflects the needs of California’s diverse bodywork community.
Please contact me at info@unwindlearning.com if you would like to hear more about how this broken system has impacted my clients, my practice, and my safety. I am available to testify or consult on the language of a future licensing bill.
With respect and urgency, Suz Vera Burroughs Unwind Oakland | Unwind Learning Oakland, California info@unwindlearning.com