Hundreds of Kentucky counselors, therapists and other licensed professionals are stuck waiting on a state agency bottleneck with no clear end date.

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Macy Bright did everything right.

She earned her psychology degree from Bellarmine University. She completed a two-year master's program in clinical mental health counseling at Spalding University. She passed the National Counselor Examination in June. She had a signed job offer from a Louisville mental health practice, waiting to pick back up with the same caseload of children she'd already spent the better part of a year building trust with- some as young as six, some who'd experienced trauma, one who'd only just learned to open up to her.

After getting her results back from the National Counselor Examination, she submitted her license application to the Kentucky Board of Licensed Professional Counselors.

That was more than a month ago. And she's still waiting for the board to sign off. Macy- along with hundreds of other new graduates across several professions in Kentucky- is now stuck. Not because of anything she did wrong, but because the state agencies responsible for implementing a new Kentucky law haven't built the system needed to comply with it.

Macy Bright at gradtuation

A law without a mechanism

Kentucky House Bill 36 and House Bill 657, passed during the 2026 legislative session, added new requirements for certain independent licensing boards: applicants for initial licensure or reinstatement must now undergo an FBI and Kentucky State Police fingerprint-based background check, with the results sent directly from KSP and the FBI to the licensing board. Applicants can no longer submit their own background check results, as they could before.

There's just one problem: the portal for KSP and the FBI to submit those results directly to boards doesn't exist yet.