Is this cool?

[DavidHume]

That sounds like some serious overstepping on the part of a state legislature, to determine how a company and potential employees are permitted to do business. I just don't see how a law like that could hold up.

Most states have laws concerning what degrees can be granted in the state. They can't really control what degrees are granted elsewhere. The regulations against using unaccredited degrees are an attempt to make such degrees entirely undesirable and also provide an expected level of confidence in the degrees that are permissable. It definitely puts the onus on the consumer, though. But it's really not all that different than a state having specific requirements that need to be met to use various professional designations like CPA or RN. As those vary by state it's not unreasonable that the standards for claiming BA or PhD would as well.

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if you're claiming to have a degree but the degree is not recognized as a legal degree, that's fraud. fraud definitely seems within the scope of the legislature.

To a point, I degree, but there should be some exceptions. Places like Smart.ly (unaccredited MBA with strict entrance requirements), Wozniak's unaccredited school, and EdX's Micromasters programs, as an example, should not be illegal to cite as education on your resume.

Stopping me from founding my own "Thorne Technical University" and issuing myself three PhD's in highly competitive fields is not something I find to be an overreach, logically, but claiming that legitimate education is illegitimate because the US Government doesn't permit it to issue a degree would be.

I think the micromasters and other such additional education can go on a resume so long as it doesn't inaccurately indicate it is a MSc or such.

Stegner Fellows at Stanford spend two years in classes and attending conferences but do not receive a degree. There are a whole slew of academic fellowships that similarly provide education but no degree that any one that received one would very much add to their resume, just not as a degree.