Frequently asked questions

It is legal authorization to practice in another member state that rides on your existing home-state license, instead of being a second license you apply for, pay for, and renew separately.

Three things must all be true: you hold the RD credential from CDR, you hold an active and unencumbered license in your home state, and you live in a member state. The third one is where most people fall out. Eligibility follows where you live, not where your employer is or where your patients are.

No. The compact is legally active. The seven-state threshold was met in March 2025 and the Compact Commission has formed, but no privileges are being issued yet. The Commission is still building the license-verification and data infrastructure. CDR describes implementation as roughly 12 to 24 months of build-out, with the first privileges expected in 2027. No specific month has been announced.

Seven is the activation number written into the compact text itself. Below it, the compact is just a set of parallel state laws with nothing connecting them. At seven, the Commission legally comes into existence and the thing becomes an institution with rulemaking authority. Mississippi was the seventh, in March 2025.

No. There is no national license. Every dietitian keeps the CDR credential and an unencumbered home-state license, answers to their home-state board, and practices under the laws of the state where the patient is physically located. Member states keep their authority to set scope of practice and to discipline. The compact adds a channel for sharing disciplinary information, which makes it harder for a sanctioned practitioner to move and start over.

No fee has been adopted. The Compact Commission sets fees through rulemaking and that process is still underway, so any number in circulation — including the one below — is a proposal, not a price. Where the conversation stands, from the Commission’s own Finance Committee minutes:

• A $25 commission fee has been recommended, not adopted. The Finance Committee voted on July 30, 2026 to recommend $25 per compact privilege. It still needs the Executive Committee and then the full Commission.
• There are two fees, not one. The commission fee goes to the Compact Commission for each privilege. On top of that, each member state may charge its own fee for granting one, and each state sets that amount itself.
• Nobody can tell you the state half yet. The Commission’s interim legal counsel treated mandating state fee levels as a grey area — the Commission can encourage an amount, not require one — so the second half of the cost will vary by state.
• Fifteen member states have told the Commission what they intend to charge. Reviewing those answers, the Finance Committee’s own concern was that several plan to price a privilege at or near their full licensing fee, which its members called higher than other compacts average and likely to discourage anyone from using it.
• The next thing to watch is the Executive Committee. Its August 2026 minutes are not posted yet, and that is where a vote on the $25 recommendation would surface first.

It means the compact cannot help you yet, and the fix is a bigger one. A compact privilege attaches to a home-state license; with no license there is nothing to attach it to. California, Colorado and Virginia are in that position. In those states the fight is dietitian licensure first and compact adoption second, and a licensure law is much harder to pass than the compact. Arizona and Michigan are not on this list because both have licensure laws on the books and are waiting on their own agencies to stand the programs up.

Puerto Rico is on our map, and our reading is that it could join, though that reading is ours and no official body has confirmed it. The compact never mentions Puerto Rico. The word "territory" appears exactly once in the whole model legislation, in the Section 2 definition of a State: "any state, commonwealth, district, or territory of the United States of America." Puerto Rico is both a commonwealth and a territory, and it licenses the profession through the Junta Examinadora de Nutricionistas y Dietistas under Ley Núm. 82 of 1972, so unlike the blocked states it has a license for a privilege to attach to. The barrier there is narrower than eligibility. Not every licensed nutritionist-dietitian in Puerto Rico can sit the CDR registration exam, which the compact requires of every privilege holder, and the Puerto Rico academy is working to amend Law 82 before it turns to the compact. Puerto Rico also enacted a universal licensure recognition law in August 2025, Ley 102-2025, which runs one way only and says a license issued under it does not make the holder eligible to work in another state under an interstate compact. No compact bill has ever been filed there. The other four territories, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa, fall under the same definition, but we have not confirmed whether any of them license dietitians, and we are not going to guess. If you can settle any of this, tell us and we will say who did.

No compact bill has ever been introduced in Maryland. Maryland dietitians who pushed for it were told the state would not participate because Maryland does not require criminal background checks for dietetic licensure, and the compact requires member states to conduct them. That reason expires on the state’s own timetable: the Maryland Board of Dietetic Practice has said it will require background checks for new applicants after July 1, 2027, and for renewals after January 1, 2028. A second, larger barrier gets less attention. Maryland licenses two designations, a Dietitian on the CDR route and a Nutritionist on the CNS route, and a compact privilege requires CDR registration, so the compact as written would reach only the first group. Montana wrote its law to extend a privilege to nutritionists as well, which gives Maryland a precedent to follow.

Same family, different agreement. The interstate compact model is well established across health professions, and nursing, physical therapy, medicine, counseling and others each have their own. They are separate legal instruments, each with its own member list, commission and rules. Being a member state of one says nothing about the others.

The Dietitian Licensure Compact Commission, made up of one delegate per member state, each a designee of that state’s licensing authority. The Commission does the rulemaking and will issue privileges. Much of that work happens in its Executive, Finance and Rules committees, and its meetings are open to the public. CDR verifies credentials and provides information but does not administer the compact. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and The Council of State Governments developed it; they do not run it.

See agendas and minutes on the Commission’s meetings page ↗

The Department of Defense funded the Academy’s work with The Council of State Governments’ National Center for Interstate Compacts beginning in October 2022. Military spouses in licensed professions lose their ability to work every time a family is restationed, and the Department of Defense treats licensure portability as a readiness issue.

Reviewed 26 October 2026, covering all 52 jurisdictions: 19 member states, 1 with a live bill, 8 stalled, 1 vetoed, 3 structurally blocked, 20 with no bill on record. Every state page shows a confidence level and its sources. Legislative status can change the day after a review, so confirm it with your own legislature before relying on it.

If your state has no bill, ask a legislator to file one. Twenty jurisdictions are in that position, and it's the easiest place to make a difference. If your state has a live bill, ask for a YES vote and offer to testify. If your state is already in, push on implementation funding and talk to colleagues in neighboring states. In every case the letter works the same way. It's a real constituent asking for one specific thing, with three sentences about their own experience.