Alcohol server training rules for employers

Every provider page tells your server how to buy a course. None of them tells you, the person who has to keep a roster compliant, what the state actually asks of your business. That is what this page is. Everything below was read on the state’s own page, and each state file links the source and the date we read it.

The rule in each state we have checked

State	Required	Deadline after a hire	Valid for	Jobs covered
California	Yes, by law	60 days from your first day of employment	3 years, renewed in the 90 days before it expires	5 of 7
Delaware	Yes, by law	—	2 years, lowered from 4 by HB 195 in 2025	4 of 7
Hawaii	By county	—	—	0 of 7
New Mexico	Yes, by law	30 days from being hired	3 years	5 of 7
Oklahoma	Yes, by law	The training certificate is uploaded within 14 days of the license being issued	2 years	3 of 7
Oregon	Yes, by law	Before your first shift. The 45 day grace period was removed on March 31, 2025 by HB 4138	5 years	2 of 7
Pennsylvania	Yes, by law	6 months from hire for servers, 180 days for managers	2 years for the manager certification	4 of 7
South Carolina	Yes, by law	New hires: 30 days	3 years	3 of 7
Tennessee	Yes, by law	61 days from the day you start serving, and that grace is once in your life, not once per employer	5 years	2 of 7
Texas	In practice, yes	Within 30 days of being hired, to keep the employer's protection	2 years	3 of 7
Vermont	Yes, by law	Before you start working	Re-training every 24 months	3 of 7

A dash means the state does not publish that figure, not that there is no rule. Open the state file to see the source and the date.

The part that costs employers money

The clock starts at the hire, not at the schedule. Every deadline in the table above runs from the day the person starts, which means a hire you make this week is already burning days. The states that publish an enforcement line put the penalty on the business, not on the server.

California: Mandatory since July 1, 2022 under AB 1221, covering roughly 56,000 on-sale businesses. (California ABC, RBS FAQ, read August 1, 2026)
Hawaii: There is no statewide mandate. In all four counties the obligation falls on managers or the person in active charge, not on every server. Only Honolulu adds bartenders. (County liquor commission rules, read county by county, read August 1, 2026)
New Mexico: The broadest mandate of the eleven states checked: bartenders, waiters, bouncers, convenience store cashiers and owners are all covered. (NMAC 15.11.31 and New Mexico RLD, read August 1, 2026)
Oklahoma: Two separate requirements, not one: an individual state license with a fee, and a course from an approved provider (37A O.S. section 37A-2-121). (Oklahoma ABLE Commission, employee license and server training, read August 1, 2026)
South Carolina: Mandatory since January 1, 2026, with enforcement since March 2, 2026. The fine is $100 per violation and it lands on the employer. (SC Information Letter #26-7, SCDOR (January 27, 2026), read August 1, 2026)
Texas: Not required by law. It works through a safe harbor: the TABC will not act against the business's license if everyone serving is certified within 30 days of hire, the business has written policies, and it has fewer than 3 violations in 12 months. (TABC certification FAQ, read August 1, 2026)
Vermont: Required by statute (7 V.S.A. section 213). The penalty is suspension, a fine of up to $100, or both. (7 V.S.A. section 213 and Vermont DLL education, read August 1, 2026)

Cards expire, and nobody tells you when. The state issues the credential to the person, not to your business, so the expiry is invisible from your side until someone fails an inspection. The table above has the length of every clock we have verified.

A card from another state does not count.There is no reciprocity between state server credentials. Someone who moves from one of these states to another starts over, on that state’s clock.

If your staff work in more than one state

The rules do not line up, and the table above is the proof: no two deadlines match, the credential lasts a different number of years in almost every state, and the approved provider list is different in each one with very little overlap. A provider approved in one state is not approved in the next one unless that state approved it separately, which is why the provider table on each state file is that state’s own list and not a single list we picked.

Every state file here carries the full approved list, the price where we have read it at the source, and the date. Start with the state that has your largest headcount: California, Delaware, Hawaii, New Mexico.

What this page is not

It is not compliance advice and we do not manage anyone’s roster. We publish what each state publishes, with the source and the date, so you can check it yourself before you act on it. We also do not cover every state yet: 11 are published here, and the ones that are not are not published because we have not read them at the source. How we check and how this site makes money.