Original research · LegiScan bill tracker · As of September 16, 2026 · Distinct from our Q3 Statehouse Licensing Index · Not legal advice
Living refresh (September 16, 2026, same day): LegiScan re-pull confirmed the primary WC-threshold set is unchanged — no new who-must-carry bills added. See also sales tax on services & contractor license bills.
This page tracks session bills that touch workers’ compensation who-must-carry / employee-count thresholds (and related LLC/officer, contractor proof, PEO language) — a legislation tracker, not a generic WC rate guide or static “is WC mandatory?” chart. In this scan, bills do not move thresholds as a 50-state wave. After screening thousands of LegiScan hits, we publish 9 curated primary bills in 6 states (Passed 7, Introduced 2) as of September 16, 2026. Most states have no citeable threshold bill in this pass. Not legal advice — confirm current statute and bill text.
Key findings
- Action is concentrated, not nationwide. Curated primary bills sit in CA, DE, NH, NJ, OK, OR only. The other states did not yield a citeable WC employee-threshold, entity-exemption, contractor-WC-proof, or PEO/leasing bill after screening.
- Enacted examples are specific, not generic politics. Delaware HB 144 raised LLC members eligible for a WC exemption from four to eight. California SB 291 (chaptered Oct. 7, 2025) amends contractor workers’ compensation insurance statutes — relevant to licensed HVAC and other contractors.
- Definition acts need the enrolled text. Oklahoma’s AWC / WC “modifying definitions” bills (SB 95, SB 1076, SB 1944) passed, but titles do not state a numeric employee-count change. We include them as possible coverage-definition moves and flag the limit.
- Pending is labeled pending. New Jersey S2372 / A3167 (2026–27) would change WC insurance requirements for certain corporations and partnerships. Introduced only, as of this date.
- Licensing volume lives on the other page. Salon compacts, childcare docket size, and per-1,000-bill concentration (Illinois volume / Kentucky rate) are documented in the Statehouse Licensing Index. We do not reprint that 719-bill table here.
Primary tracker — WC threshold and who-must-carry
Inclusion here means the bill’s title or official description indicates a change to who must carry workers’ compensation (employee or LLC-member counts, officer/partner rules, contractor WC proof, or PEO/employee-leasing allocation). Status is LegiScan’s progress code, not your local effective date. A passed bill can still wait on a later effective date.
| State | Bill | Status | Status date | Session | Impact | What we screened |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delaware | DE HB144 | Passed | 2023-06-30 | 2023–2024 (recent) | wc entity exemption | An Act To Amend Title 19 Of The Delaware Code Relating To Workers Compensation Raises LLC members who may be exempt from WC reimbursement from four to eight — a numeric exemption threshold, not a licensing bill. |
| California | CA SB291 | Passed | 2025-10-07 | 2025–2026 (current) | wc contractor insurance | Contractors: workers’ compensation insurance. Amends California contractor workers’ compensation insurance statutes (BPC 7017.3, 7099.2, 7125.4, 7125.7). Material to licensed HVAC and other contractors who must prove WC coverage. |
| New Hampshire | NH SB655 | Passed | 2026-06-22 | 2026 (current) | wc peo leasing | Relative to employee leasing companies, workers' compensation coverage options, and a minimum wage exemption for minor league baseball players. Employee-leasing / WC coverage-option changes (title also includes an unrelated minor-league wage exemption — mixed bill). |
| Oregon | OR HB2800 | Passed | 2025-06-06 | 2025 (recent) | wc peo leasing | Relating to professional employer organizations under workers' compensation law; and prescribing an effective date. Renames worker-leasing companies as PEOs and allocates employer WC duties between the PEO and the client for some or all workers. |
| Oklahoma | OK SB1944 | Passed | 2026-05-13 | 2026 (current) | wc definition act | Administrative Workers' Compensation Act; modifying definition. Effective date. Administrative Workers’ Compensation Act — modifying a definition. Title does not state an employee-count change; enrolled text must be read before treating it as a threshold move. |
| Oklahoma | OK SB1076 | Passed | 2025-05-12 | 2026 session / approved 2025-05 | wc definition act | Administrative Workers' Compensation Act; modifying definitions. Effective date. AWC Act — modifying definitions. Same caveat: possible coverage-definition change, not a published numeric threshold in the title. |
| Oklahoma | OK SB95 | Passed | 2025-05-07 | 2025 (recent) | wc definition act | Workers' compensation; amending definitions. Effective date. Workers’ compensation — amending definitions. Same caveat as other OK definition acts. |
| New Jersey | NJ S2372 | Introduced | 2026–2027 (current) | wc officer partner coverage | Pending: WC insurance requirements for certain corporations and partnerships. Companion A3167. Not enacted as of this scan. | |
| New Jersey | NJ A3167 | Introduced | 2026–2027 (current) | wc officer partner coverage | Assembly companion to S2372 (corporations and partnerships WC insurance requirements). Pending. |
Not legal advice. Bill titles and LegiScan descriptions are short. Confirm enrolled/chaptered text and effective dates with the legislature or a licensed attorney in that state before changing coverage. This table is not a substitute for current WC requirements by state.
Hypothesis check — most states are quiet
We hypothesized that most states have little WC employee-threshold action in a given session, while a few produce citeable moves worth tracking beside the static requirements table. The curated set supports that: 6 states, not a national rewrite of who must buy a policy. Quiet states are not “better”; they simply did not show a screened threshold bill in this pull.
Secondary — requirement bills we are not turning into a licensing index
A handful of bills change license hours, fees, registration, or sales tax on personal services for trades we cover. They are listed so a reader of the WC tracker is not blindsided — and so we can point, clearly, at the licensing index for volume:
| State | Bill | Status | Status date | Session | Impact | What we screened |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kansas | KS HB2045 | Passed | 2025-04-11 | 2025–2026 | lic daycare | Reducing certain license fees and training requirements for child care staff, creating a process for day care facility licensees to apply for temporary waiver of certain statutory requirements, authorizing the secretary of health and environment to develop and operate pilot programs to increase child care availability or capacity, transferring certain child care programs to the Kansas office of early childhood and creating day care licensing duties of the director of early childhood. Reduces some child-care staff license fees and training requirements; temporary statutory waivers; capacity pilots. A requirement/fee change, not a WC threshold. |
| California | CA AB753 | Passed | 2025-10-01 | current/recent CA | lic daycare | Childcare: facility licensure: teacher requirements. Childcare facility licensure and teacher requirements. |
| Oklahoma | OK HB1628 | Passed | 2025-05-28 | current/recent OK | lic other trade | Roofing Contractor Registration Act; denial of registration or endorsement; residential roofer endorsement provisions; requirements; codification; effective date. Roofing Contractor Registration Act — registration/endorsement rules for a contractor trade adjacent to home services. |
| Oregon | OR SB865 | Passed | 2025-06-06 | 2025 | lic other trade | Relating to work performed by a landscape contracting business; and prescribing an effective date. Landscape contracting business: expands work that requires a Landscape Contractors Board license; limited CCB water-feature alternative. Licensing scope, not a WC employee-count bill. |
| New York | NY S10508 | Introduced | 2026-05-15 | recent NY | sales tax services | Exempts from the payment of sales tax charges for haircuts and basic barbering and cosmetology services. Would exempt haircut / basic barbering and cosmetology charges from sales tax. Pending. Distinct from occupational-license bills. |
Our screen also flagged dozens of cosmetology-compact / hours bills (the licensing index already showed salons as the second-largest docket after child care). We are not republishing that list. Use the Statehouse Licensing Index for licensing attention by state and trade. Child care remains the high-volume topic there (387 of 719 tagged bills in that scan).
Downloads
- Curated primary + secondary CSV
- Primary WC-threshold CSV
- Secondary requirement CSV
- Larger screened getBill set (first-pass CSV) — includes false positives we culled from the published tables
What this means if you hire
A bill is not coverage. If you clean houses, mow lawns, run HVAC, open a daycare, a salon, or a food truck, start from the current employee threshold on workers’ comp requirements by state, then read any bill in your state in the table above. Industry walkthroughs: how to start a cleaning business, landscaping, HVAC, daycare, hair salon, food truck.
If you are already at the hiring line, quotes are a planning input — not a conclusion from this tracker: cleaning business insurance, landscaping insurance, HVAC insurance, daycare insurance, food truck insurance. We do not rank states as “best” for WC.
Methods, inclusion rules, and limitations
As of September 16, 2026 (America/New_York). This tracker used LegiScan Pull API getSearch / getBill with state=ALL, year=2 (current) and year=3 (recent).
Query families (documented, not raw dump): workers’ compensation + (threshold / exemption / employee counts / sole proprietor / partner / independent contractor / compulsory coverage); AWC Act definitions; contractor + WC insurance; LLC/officer exemptions; PEO / employee leasing; plus a narrow secondary pass for daycare/salon/HVAC/landscape/food-truck licensing-requirement language and sales tax on personal services.
Inclusion (primary): title or description indicates a change to employee/member counts, LLC/officer/partner exemptions, contractor WC insurance proof, sole-proprietor/IC coverage, or PEO/leasing allocation. Oklahoma definition acts are included with an explicit “read the enrolled text” caveat.
Exclusion / false-positive cull: WC budgets and appropriations; utilization review / fee schedules / MRI reimbursement; first-responder psychological presumptions; vocational rehabilitation process; election-worker tax; judges/PERS; child-support and life-insurance collisions; honorary resolutions. Broad searches returned thousands of hits and LegiScan page counts inflated during pagination — we do not treat raw hit counts as a ranking.
Published vs archived: API archives (keys stripped) and a larger screened CSV sit in the research folder. The tables above are the curated set. Secondary licensing is capped so this page cannot be mistaken for another 719-bill index.
Limitations: LegiScan is not the official code and is not complete statutory history. Search relevance ≠ topical precision. Some official descriptions are one-line. Sessions differ in length (two-year vs short). Congress may appear in ALL searches; D.C. is not a LegiScan statehouse in the same sweep as the 50 states. Status “Passed” is not the same as “in force today.” We will refresh this tracker; treat the as-of date as part of the claim.
Bill data courtesy of LegiScan (CC BY 4.0). Screening and editorial notes are ours.