What compact privilege is
A multistate license from your primary state of residence carries compact privilege — the authority to practice in other compact states without licensing separately in each. It only exists between states that are live in the Nurse Licensure Compact.
Practicing in South Carolina on privilege
Because South Carolina participates, an active multistate license lets you work in South Carolina — common for travel nurses and telehealth. Privilege follows the patient’s location and your home-state license staying active and multistate.
The law that governs this in South Carolina
Working in South Carolina on another state’s license is practice in South Carolina, so it is South Carolina’s own nurse practice act that defines what you may do and the South Carolina Board of Nursing that applies it. That act is S.C. Code tit. 40, ch. 33 (Nurses); discipline at § 40-33-110.
The compact itself is separate law. South Carolina adopted it at S.C. Code Ann. §§ 40-33-1300 to 40-33-1365 (tit. 40, ch. 33, art. 15 — Nurse Licensure Compact), which is what allows a multistate license issued elsewhere to reach South Carolina at all — the practice act still decides what you may do once it does.
Article 15 of the Nurse Practice Act chapter, opening "The Nurse Licensure Compact is hereby enacted into law and entered into by this State". Fourteen sections, 40-33-1300 through 40-33-1365. The article carries a codifier’s note throughout that 2017 Act No. 41 rewrote these sections "to reflect changes mandated for membership in the Nurse Licensure Compact" — that is the original-to-enhanced changeover, recorded in the code itself rather than inferred. Note for anyone re-checking this: the chapter page is ~199KB and truncates when read through a summarizing fetch, which reports the compact as absent. It is not absent; it is past the cut.
Confirm before you rely on it
License status changes and the compact evolves. Confirm your own license type on Nursys and check South Carolina’s current rules with the South Carolina Board of Nursing. CompactStates.com is an independent guide, not a licensing authority.
Since when has a compact license worked in South Carolina?
Nurses holding another state’s multistate license have been able to practice in South Carolina since January 19, 2018. It has been a member long enough that most guidance you find will be accurate on this point.
Where a South Carolina multistate license reaches
If your South Carolina license is multistate — not every South Carolina license is — it carries privilege into these 39 jurisdictions, because each one currently issues and honours multistate licenses. It reaches nowhere else, and a non-compact state needs its own license by endorsement.
Two conditions sit underneath this list and neither is visible on it. Your primary state of residence must actually be South Carolina — privilege follows residence, not where the license was issued. And the license itself must be multistate rather than single-state, which is a fact about your record that only verification can settle.
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