Sunrise is a process under which an occupation or profession wishing to receive state certification or licensure must propose the components of the legislation, along with cost and benefit estimates of the proposed regulation. The profession must then convince the legislators that consumers will be unduly harmed if the proposed legislation is not adopted. Interestingly, professions rather than consumer groups usually seek regulation, although one rationale for this is that the practitioners understand the harm associated with professional practice better than do consumers. At least 14 states adopted sunrise legislation, although, as with sunset, the activity became more widespread through changes in legislative review processes in many states. A proliferation of voluntarily credentialed groups has reduced the number of requests for licensure placed before legislatures, although the allied health, environmental and financial professions are making progress with uniform licensure.

CLEAR also tracks individual sunrise and sunset reports on its CLEAR News weblog.

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