Which states ban medical debt on credit reports? The 2026 list

What applies in every state

There's no federal ban. The CFPB finalized a rule in January 2025 to keep medical bills out of credit reports used by lenders, but a federal court in the Eastern District of Texas vacated it on July 11, 2025, in Cornerstone Credit Union League v. CFPB, at the joint request of the Bureau and the industry groups that sued. The CFPB's own rule page now says those materials are "for reference only."

What does apply nationwide is the voluntary policy of Equifax, Experian and TransUnion:

• Paid medical collections came off reports as of July 1, 2022.
• Unpaid medical collections wait one year before they can appear, up from six months.
• Medical collections with an initial balance under $500 were removed, announced April 11, 2023.

That leaves unpaid medical collections of $500 or more, at least a year old, as the ones that can still show up in a state without its own law. How the scores treat those is covered in medical debt on credit reports in 2026.

The 15 states with a law in effect

"Bureaus" means the consumer reporting agencies. "Providers" means hospitals, doctors and similar medical businesses, and "collectors" includes debt buyers where the law names them.

Two places sit just outside the table. The District of Columbia enacted the Medical Debt Mitigation Amendment Act of 2026 (D.C. Law 26-172, dated August 20, 2026), but the D.C. Code says its change "has not been implemented" because it depends on funding in an approved budget. And Texas had a law barring bureaus from reporting certain out-of-network medical collections for insured patients. A federal court in the Western District of Texas held it preempted on August 10, 2026, and barred the state from enforcing it.

The fine print that changes who's protected

The table's last column matters more than the headline. Read your state's row for these differences.

Who the law binds. A ban on bureaus, like Illinois or Vermont, stops the item at the file no matter who sent it. A ban on providers and collectors, like Virginia's, works upstream: the debt shouldn't be reported in the first place. Several states, including New York, Maryland and Washington, do both.

What counts as medical debt. Colorado, Illinois and Vermont exclude a medical bill charged to a general credit card. Once you put it on a regular card, it's card debt in those states. A card offered only for health care costs is treated as medical debt.

Big mortgages. Colorado's law doesn't apply to a report used for credit above the national conforming loan limit for a one-unit home, which FHFA sets each year. A jumbo mortgage application in Colorado can see medical debt the state's law otherwise keeps out.

Past debts. New Jersey's general reporting ban covers care on or after July 22, 2024, while its bans on reporting paid medical debt and debt under $500 apply regardless of when the bill was incurred. Maryland's law says its bureau ban applies regardless of when the debt was incurred.

A void debt. California, Connecticut, New York, Oregon and Washington tie the reporting ban to the debt itself. Report it wrongly and, under those laws, the debt can be void or unenforceable. That's a strong reason to document any medical collection you find on your report in those states.

Will these laws survive the preemption fight?

The Fair Credit Reporting Act limits what states can regulate about credit reports, and the fight is over how far that goes.

In October 2025 the CFPB published an interpretive rule arguing that the FCRA generally preempts state laws keeping categories of information, medical debt included, off reports. The rule itself says it "does not have the force or effect of law" and that courts decide how preemption applies. California's attorney general answered in November 2025 that the state ban "remains the law in California" and will be enforced.

The courts are split by state. Texas lost its out-of-network law in August 2026, though the same court rejected the industry's broadest preemption theory and declined to defer to either CFPB interpretive rule. NCLC reports that Maine's broadened law is back before a federal court there and that the debt collection industry has sued over Colorado's. For the rest of the list, NCLC's September 2026 update reports no specific challenge.

Example: one bill, four addresses

Say you have an unpaid $1,200 emergency room bill that went to collections 18 months ago.

• In Texas, with no reporting ban in force: it's unpaid, its starting balance is over $500, and it's more than a year old. It can appear on all three reports under the bureaus' policy.
• In Illinois: a bureau can't include it in a report or keep it in your file. If it shows up, that's a reporting error under state law.
• In Virginia: the hospital and the collector weren't allowed to report it. The dispute goes to the bureau and to the collector that furnished it.
• In Colorado, applying for a jumbo mortgage: the conforming-limit exception means it can appear on that report, even though the same item shouldn't show up on a report for a car loan.

Now pay it. Under the bureaus' policy, a paid medical collection comes off in every state, including Texas.

How to use your state's law

1. Pull all three reports free at AnnualCreditReport.com and list every collection from a hospital, doctor, lab, ambulance service or medical billing company.
2. Find your row in the table and check the in-effect date, who the law binds, and how it defines medical debt.
3. Dispute each medical collection that shouldn't be there with every bureau showing it. Name the statute from the table and say what it prohibits. The process is in how to dispute a credit report error.
4. Send the same dispute to the collector if your state's law binds collectors or providers, and keep copies of everything.
5. Report a violation to your state attorney general's consumer protection office. If a bureau or collector won't fix a clear error, a CFPB complaint creates a federal record too.
6. In a state without a law, check each medical collection against the bureaus' three tests: paid, under $500 at the start, or less than a year old. A collection that meets any one of them is a reporting error you can dispute.

Unpaid medical collections that legitimately remain still affect some scores more than others. How collections affect your score breaks that down by scoring model.