Answered
Nursing Pact States
Written and reviewed by Dana Whitfield, RN, MSN · 3 min read · Updated September 2026
Short answer
Nursing pact states, more commonly called Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC) states, are the roughly 40-plus US states that let a nurse practise across state lines on one multistate licence instead of separate licences per state. The exact list depends on which states have both enacted and implemented the compact, and a small group, including California and New York, has done neither.
Answering it directly
Nursing pact states refers to the states participating in the Nurse Licensure Compact, an interstate agreement that lets a nurse licensed in one member state practise in any other member state, in person or by telehealth, without a second licence application. More than 40 states currently participate in some form, and the compact covers RN and LPN/VN licensure specifically.
The word pact is not the compact's official name but plain-English shorthand nurses use in search and conversation; boards of nursing and NCSBN refer to it as the Nurse Licensure Compact, or NLC. If you see pact states and NLC states used interchangeably online, they describe the same list.
Why the answer is what it is
Interstate licensure compacts exist because nursing licensure is constitutionally a state matter, not a federal one, so a single national licence has never been possible. The compact works around that by having each state legislature separately pass identical model language, then agree to recognise licences issued under it by other member states, which is why joining takes an act of that state's legislature, not a regulatory decision by its nursing board alone.
That legislative requirement is also why membership is uneven: a state's board of nursing can support joining while its legislature has other priorities, and the compact bill can sit for several sessions before passing, as happened in a number of states. Once passed, a state also has to build the administrative side, background-check integration and licence-record sharing through Nursys, before it counts as implemented rather than merely enacted.
Exceptions and edge cases
A multistate licence does not protect you from a member state's own practice laws; scope of practice, delegation rules, and prescriptive authority for APRNs still vary by state, and a compact licence does not harmonise them. It also does not override a disciplinary action: if one member state restricts or suspends your licence, that action is visible to and generally honoured by every other member state through the shared Nursys database.
Military spouses and their dependents have a separate provision within the compact allowing continued multistate practice privileges during a rapid relocation, worth checking specifically if that applies to you. Telehealth adds its own wrinkle: providing care to a patient physically located in a state where you are not licensed, compact or not, generally requires licensure recognised in the patient's state, so a compact licence only helps if the patient's state is also a member.
What to do next
Look up your own state's compact status, and the status of any state you plan to work in or provide telehealth to, using NCSBN's current member list rather than a saved article, since the list has changed more than once in the last few years. If you are choosing where to hold legal residence for licensure purposes, weigh compact membership against a state's other requirements, continuing education hours and renewal fees among them, since those differ by state regardless of compact status.
The next step on this is the same as on everything else here: answer questions and read the rationales. Our fundamentals practice questions are the closest set to what this page covers.
Common questions
Is nursing pact the same thing as the Nurse Licensure Compact?
Yes. Nursing pact states and NLC states describe the same interstate agreement; pact is informal phrasing, not a separate compact.
Do compact states share disciplinary records?
Yes, through the Nursys database, so a licence restriction or suspension in one member state is visible to boards in every other member state and is generally honoured there too.
Does a multistate licence let me prescribe across state lines as an APRN?
Not automatically. RN and LPN/VN licensure moves under the NLC, but APRN prescriptive authority is governed separately by each state's own rules and, where applicable, the separate APRN Compact.
What should military nurses know about compact states?
The compact includes provisions for active-duty service members and their spouses that can preserve multistate practice privileges through a relocation, so check that provision specifically with your state board rather than assuming standard residency rules apply.
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