ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Edward Timmons is the vice president of policy at the Archbridge Institute.

U.S. military members and their families make tremendous sacrifices for their country and to defend our freedom. State licensing boards need to stop insulting our military families by making it hard for them to continue working when they have to transfer to a new military base.

Three years ago, Hannah Magee Portée wanted to keep working using her school counselor’s license from Ohio and Missouri. Authorities in Texas, despite ongoing counselor shortages, refused to allow her to work.

Portée was one of the lucky ones. The Department of Justice filed a suit against the Texas State Board for Educator Certification and she is now allowed to work.

Unfortunately, Portée’s story is not unique. Fast forward to 2026 and there are still reports of military families facing unnecessary hurdles when they are trying to transfer their licenses. The Department of Justice has been doing what it can to try to get state licensing authorities to behave better. At the end of last year, two letters were sent to state licensing authorities.

First, federal law requires that states recognize out-of-state licenses for military families. Second, nearly all states have enacted some form of license recognition for military families.

One set of policies that is actually doing more harm than good are licensing compacts. Proponents of licensing compacts claim that they enhance mobility, but the sad truth is that most licensing compacts are not even active.

Compacts, unlike the superior model of simple recognition, amount to one occupation at a time. They also require coordination — all 50 states have to enact model legislation to work as fully intended. And they are governed by a new national bureaucracy.

Consider the case of a military family residing in California that receives orders to transfer to North Carolina. California policymakers have chosen to not enact the Nurse Licensure Compact. So what happens when a military spouse who is a nurse gets orders to move to North Carolina? She has to sit on the sideline and not do the job that she was trained to do.

Is this the best that we can do for our military families? Unfortunately, the latest version of federal guidelines excludes professions with compacts from taking advantage of simple recognition.

There are several immediate steps that states and federal policymakers need to consider. First, for all non-compact professions, state licensing authorities need to fully recognize out-of-state licenses for military families. It has been 10 years since former first ladies Michelle Obama and Jill Biden highlighted this issue. There is no reason that state licensing authorities should not be honoring federal and state law.

Second, it is time to update language in federal law. Compacts do not actually work or function the way that we were led to believe. Give military families two pathways — one by simple recognition and one by compacts. Do not replace recognition with the compact path. The illustrative example above highlights the pitfalls that can occur if compacts are the sole pathway.

Third, it is time for policymakers to reconsider the compact model. Compacts represent an inferior and expensive way of trying to enhance credential portability. The recognition model is streamlined and straightforward. If an individual has a license in good standing they can continue working when they move. There is no need for policy coordination for all 50 states. No need to develop a new national bureaucracy for every licensed profession. Compacts are not the “gold standard”—they are clearly inferior to simple recognition.

We ask military families to drop everything and move across the U.S. and around the world, uprooting their families and lives to serve our country. The least that states can do for them is not make their lives more difficult by keeping them from doing jobs that they are trained and fully authorized to do. State licensing boards need to step up and do the right thing, and quit hassling our military families.