Louisiana Banned Advertising as an Insurance Claims Specialist. Twice Over, It Steps Around Collision.
The short version. Louisiana now prohibits persons performing contracting services from advertising or soliciting as insurance claims specialists, and prohibits a public adjuster from also being the contractor on a claim he processed. Both are on the books and both took effect on 1 August 2025. Neither one reaches a collision repair shop, and the reason is not an oversight: it is written into two separate definitions, in two separate titles, on purpose.
What Act 144 actually did
Act 144 of the 2025 Regular Session started as House Bill 121, by Representative Adams. It passed 96-0 in the House, 35-0 in the Senate, and 90-0 on concurrence. It is two pages long. It became effective 1 August 2025.
It did two things.
One. It added R.S. 22:1706(H)(11) to the standards of conduct for public adjusters:
A public adjuster shall not act as a contractor or subcontractor nor provide any construction, roofing, or repair services to the insured in connection with an insurance claim the adjuster has processed.
That is the conflict of interest the bill was aimed at: the person who tells you what your loss is worth should not also be the person you pay to fix it.
Two. It added two paragraphs to R.S. 37:2159.1, the prohibited-acts section in the contractor licensing chapter. They are now, after the 2026 renumbering described below, R.S. 37:2159.1(A)(7):
Advertising or soliciting as insurance claims specialists.
and R.S. 37:2159.1(A)(8):
Advertising or soliciting as providing any insurance claim or policy interpretation related services to an insured.
Nine words in the first one, no qualifier at all. On its face, that paragraph does not care what kind of insurance claim you are advertising about.
The section got wider in the same session, and wider again this month
Two other acts have touched R.S. 37:2159.1 since, and both matter.
Act 422 of 2025 (Senate Bill 122, Senator Abraham, also effective 1 August 2025) was a broad rewrite of the contractor licensing chapter. Between the 2025 acts, the section heading lost the words home improvement, and so did the line that says who is bound. It now reads:
The following acts are prohibited by persons performing contracting services:
That is a real broadening. A prohibition that used to be about home improvement contracting is now about contracting, unqualified.
Act 757 of 2026 (Senate Bill 326, Senator Abraham) amended and reenacted the whole of R.S. 37:2159.1 and took effect on 1 August 2026, seventeen days before this page was written. It kept both of Act 144's paragraphs word for word, redesignated the list as Subsection A, added a ninth prohibited act, and bolted on an assignment-of-benefits regime at R.S. 37:2159.1(C):
No person shall solicit or accept an assignment, in whole or in part, of any post-loss insurance benefit under a residential or commercial property insurance policy. Any such assignment agreement shall be against public policy and void.
Look at the reach of that sentence and then at the reach of the one above it. Subsection C binds no person: wider than Subsection A, which binds only persons performing contracting services. But the policies it protects are residential and commercial property policies. An auto policy is outside it.
Why none of it reaches your body shop
Two independent closures, either of which would be enough on its own.
One: nobody working an auto claim is a public adjuster in Louisiana
R.S. 22:1692 is the definitions section for the whole public adjuster Part. Inside the definition of the activity itself, at R.S. 22:1692(8)(a), sits this:
Public adjusting does not include acting in any manner in relation to claims for damages to or arising out of the operation of a motor vehicle.
That is a carve-out from the activity, not a narrowing of a duty. If you are not doing public adjusting, you are not a public adjuster, and none of the Part reaches you. So R.S. 22:1706(H)(11), Act 144's headline prohibition, has no subject inside a collision shop.
It also travels. R.S. 37:2159.1(A)(2) prohibits:
Adjusting a property insurance claim on behalf of an insured as a public adjuster, as defined in R.S. 22:1692, or advertising or soliciting such services.
That paragraph does not define a public adjuster. It points at R.S. 22:1692, and a cross-reference imports the whole definition, carve-out included.
Two: the contractor chapter is about land and buildings
R.S. 37:2159.1 sits in the State Licensing Board for Contractors chapter, and that chapter opens with a definitions section that begins "As used in this Chapter". Its definition of contractor is a list, and every item on the list is construction:
Any building, highway, road, railroad, sewer, grading, excavation, pipeline, public utility structure, project development, housing, or housing development, improvement, or any other construction undertaking
plus new residential structures, improvements or repairs to existing residential structures, and mold remediation. Each limb carries a project-value floor: fifty thousand dollars for commercial and for new residential, seven thousand five hundred for residential improvements and for mold remediation. Nothing on the list is a vehicle. There is no dollar floor a collision job could cross into this chapter, because it is not the kind of work the chapter measures.
The enforcement machinery says the same thing. R.S. 37:2158(A) sets out who can be sanctioned:
The board and residential subcommittee may revoke, suspend, or refuse to renew a license; issue cease and desist orders to stop work; issue fines and penalties; or debar any person licensed pursuant to the provisions of this Chapter for any of the following violations:
Every one of those powers is aimed at any person licensed pursuant to the provisions of this Chapter, and a body shop holds no licence under this chapter to lose.
That machinery is what makes a prohibited act bite at all. R.S. 37:2158(A)(6) is the hook:
Failure to comply with the provisions of this Chapter or the rules and regulations promulgated pursuant thereto.
R.S. 37:2159.1 is a provision of the chapter, so breaching it is a ground to lose a contractor licence. If you never held one, there is nothing there.
The honest gap
Here is the part a confident article would skip.
The line that says who is bound now reads persons performing contracting services. "Contracting services" is not a defined term. R.S. 37:2150.1, the definitions section this prohibition lives under, runs to twenty-nine numbered definitions after Act 757, and that phrase is not one of them. It defines contractor, general contractor, residential contractor, home improvement contractor, subcontractor, contract and subcontract, and then the prohibited-acts section reaches for a phrase none of those supply.
So the residual question is real: could a regulator or a court read "persons performing contracting services" more broadly than the chapter's own vocabulary? We have found no Louisiana decision and no board adjudication applying R.S. 37:2159.1 to vehicle repair, and we did not search exhaustively for one.
There is also one enforcement provision that is not limited to licensees. R.S. 37:2164(A), as amended by Act 757, makes "any person who violates any provision of this Chapter" liable to the board for a fine, and adds a new ceiling for the kind of violation that has no contract value to measure against, which is precisely the shape of an advertising breach:
For violations of this Chapter for which a value cannot be determined or does not apply, the violator shall be liable to the board for a fine of not more than ten thousand dollars.
That still only bites if 2159.1 binds you in the first place. But it means the answer to "who could even bring this" is not "nobody".
What we are not saying
We are not saying a Louisiana body shop can safely advertise as an insurance claims specialist. We read one chapter of Title 37 and one part of Title 22. Unfair trade practice law, the Insurance Code's own licensing rules for adjusters, and the prohibition on the unauthorized practice of law are separate layers, and none of them is analysed here.
We are not saying Act 144 was empty. It closed a genuine conflict of interest on the property side, it passed without a single dissenting vote in either chamber, and the separation it draws is one most states have not drawn at all.
We are not claiming no state reaches unlicensed claim help in collision. That is a fifty-state question and this page is about one state. What Louisiana shows is that a statute can look like it covers the ground and be closed off by a definition two titles away.
A note on sources, because this one nearly went wrong twice
Two traps sit in the path of anyone writing this up.
The digest is not the act. The digest attached to the reengrossed version of HB 121 describes a new R.S. 37:2159.2 barring contractors from advertising, soliciting or providing insurance claims handling services before an insured initiates a claim. That section is not in the act as enrolled. The enrolled act is two pages and reaches R.S. 22:1706 and R.S. 37:2159.1 only. A digest describes the draft it was written against.
The codified page is not the current law. On the day this was written, the Louisiana Legislature's own current-law page for R.S. 37:2159.1 ends its history line at Acts 2025, No. 422, and shows eight undesignated paragraphs. Act 757 of 2026 replaced that section and has been in force since 1 August. Every quotation of R.S. 37:2159.1 above is taken from the enrolled text of Act 757, not from the codified page.
Sources
- Act 144 of 2025 (HB 121), enrolled text, read in full 18 August 2026 on legis.la.gov. Effective 1 August 2025 per the act's Résumé Digest.
- Act 422 of 2025 (SB 122), enrolled text, read 18 August 2026. Effective 1 August 2025.
- Act 757 of 2026 (SB 326), enrolled text, read in full 18 August 2026; the document carries the stamp ACT No. 757 on its first page. Effective 1 August 2026.
- R.S. 22:1692 and R.S. 22:1706, current text read 18 August 2026 from the legislature's law pages. R.S. 22:1706's history line ends at Acts 2025, No. 144.
- R.S. 37:2150.1, 37:2158 and 37:2164, current text read 18 August 2026, with R.S. 37:2159.1 and 37:2164(A) taken from Act 757 rather than the codified page.
- In New York an insurer may not even suggest a shop
- New York public adjusters cannot take auto claims
- Texas made appraisal mandatory in every personal auto policy
General consumer information: not legal, insurance, or financial advice. Requirements, coverage, and practices vary by state, policy, and manufacturer.