May an esthetician or laser technician perform microneedling in Georgia?
Oversight · part of The Practice Perimeter
Short answer
Georgia's esthetics license excludes medical aesthetics and lasers by name. The statute doesn't name microneedling, so whether it falls inside that exclusion isn't settled by the text.
✅ Georgia excludes medical aesthetics from the esthetics license by name, in the definition itself. After listing the four practices an esthetician may perform, the statute closes: “Such practices of esthetics shall not include the diagnosis, treatment, or therapy of any dermatological condition or medical aesthetics or the use of lasers.” Few states name “medical aesthetics” as a category and put it outside the license; Georgia does.
O.C.G.A. § 43-10-1(8) · verified Sep 2, 2026 · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice
Related Georgia rules
An assistant laser practitioner license is open to someone holding a current license as a physician assistant, licensed practical nurse, nurse, esthetician, or master cosmetologist (or who previously held a license or certificate as a medical practitioner), who is 21 or older and holds at least three Board-approved laser/IPL course certificates taught by a licensed physician or a certified CME/CE educator.
Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 360-35-.02(2) · verified Aug 17, 2026
And the four permitted practices are surface work with no depth permission anywhere in them: “Massaging the face, neck, décolletage, or arms”; “trimming, tweezing, shaping, or threading eyebrows”; “dyeing eyelashes or eyebrows or applying eyelash extensions”; and “waxing, threading, stimulating, cleansing, or beautifying the face, neck, arms, torso, or legs of an individual by any method with the aid of the hands or any mechanical or electrical apparatus or by the use of a cosmetic preparation.” The apparatus clause is broad as to instrument and silent as to depth — the depth limit comes from the medical-aesthetics exclusion, not from this list.
O.C.G.A. § 43-10-1(8)(A)–(D) · verified Sep 2, 2026 · read at FindLaw Codes
How other states answer this
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
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← All Georgia rules and changes · MedSpaRadar is regulatory monitoring and reference: it summarizes public laws, regulations and agency actions and links each to its source. It is not legal, medical, or compliance advice, and using it creates no attorney-client relationship. A summary can lag its source or leave out detail, and monitoring itself can be interrupted — so an absence of alerts means nothing reached you, not that nothing happened. Read the cited source, check its effective date, and confirm any change to your operations or clinical practice with qualified health-law counsel and your medical director. Legislative data via LegiScan (CC BY 4.0).