Moral Turpitude (S 2484)

This legislation would have removed the term "moral turpitude" from several professional licensing statutes, which would ensure that no one is denied entry to a profession due to this hopelessly vague term.

“Moral Turpitude” is a legally ambiguous and antiquated term that can be found in several professional licensing statutes as a basis on which to deny or revoke a person’s professional license. The first definition of the phrase in the current edition of Black’s Law Dictionary is “conduct that is contrary to justice, honesty or morality” – not terribly helpful, and certainly not limiting.

While it has been many years since the General Assembly has enacted a licensing statute using this term, a few dozen statutory provisions contain this standard. Since no person should fear being denied entry to a profession due to this hopelessly vague term, we testified in support of this legislation to eliminate the phrase from those statutes.