Legislation & Regulation
Start with the Martial Arts Legal & Regulatory Center: full legal profiles for all 50 states and DC, plus national guides to contracts, cancellation, automatic renewal, safeguarding, licensing and combat sports. Legislation and regulation is where the martial arts school business meets the statute book. This section tracks the laws, rules and court decisions that change how a school may operate: background-check and safeguarding requirements for businesses that instruct minors, zoning and occupancy rules that decide where a school may open and what hours it may keep, prepaid-membership and health-studio statutes that govern what a school may sell and what security it must post, athletic-commission licensing as it expands from professional fighting into amateur grappling, insurance and liability law, and the published court decisions that set the standard of care an instructor owes a student. We report bill numbers, chapter laws, statute sections and case citations, and we say plainly where a bill stands — introduced, passed, signed or in force — because the difference decides whether an owner must act this quarter or merely watch. This journal reports convictions and final judgments, not allegations. Nothing here is legal advice: the purpose is to tell a school owner what has actually changed, early enough to ask their own lawyer the right question.
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The Lease Is Not Permission: Zoning, Opening Hours and the Bond You Did Not Know You Owed
A Hove academy needed a planning committee to open an hour earlier. Florida can require a $25,000 bond before you…
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Timor-Leste Banned Martial Arts for Three Years. It Now Has a Law — and the Ban Is Still On.
A nationwide shutdown that began as a six-month emergency measure in November 2023 has been extended five times. In July…
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Manitoba Licensed Amateur Jiu-Jitsu. Then Kept the Money.
Since January 2025 every BJJ competitor in Manitoba needs a C$30 commission licence. The province collected C$9,540 from 318 athletes…
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A $56 Million Judgment, a $1 Million Policy, and the Jury Instruction That Did It
Greener v. M. Phelps is now published California precedent. The number gets the attention; the jury instruction is what should…
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New York Is About to Put Martial Arts Schools Under Background-Check Law
Both chambers passed it in May. It has not been signed. When it is, every adult who spends more than…
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