Is there any state more infamous for arbitrary occupational licensing laws than Louisiana?
The state’s mandate for florists to obtain a government license has often been mocked as “America’s dumbest licensing requirement” and while the state legislature finally ended the requirement that florists take a test to get licensed earlier this year, the floristry license is not the only barrier that makes it harder for Louisianans to earn a living.
Phyllis Schembre Mistric knows this only too well. Phyllis was once a licensed cosmetologist who allowed her license to lapse and pursued another career. She would still like to shampoo hair at a hair salon as a part-time job and is qualified to do so. But she must obtain a special permit to be a shampoo assistant from the Louisiana Board of Cosmetology.
Brown
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Shampooing hair is not a challenging job. Americans shampoo their own hair every day. But to shampoo the hair of others for compensation, the Cosmetology Board requires Louisianans to go through forty hours of training at an approved cosmetology school. This training is expensive for any aspiring shampooer, with the cheapest course costing over $400. The training also imposes high opportunity costs on applicants in the form of travel (only five cosmetology schools offer the course, according to the Cosmetology Board) as well as the training itself, which requires over a week to complete.
The risks associated with shampooing hair are minuscule. The only beneficiaries of keeping aspiring shampooers out of the industry are established shampoo assistants (who will face less market competition than they would otherwise) and the owners of cosmetology schools who stand to gain hundreds of dollars per applicant in unnecessary training. Sadly, this favoritism toward industry insiders is a recurring theme of Louisiana’s occupational regulations.
In addition to shampooing, Louisiana has onerous licensing restrictions for interior designers, masseuses, auctioneers, and travel guides. Until a few years ago, selling caskets required a full funeral director’s license, even though the state doesn’t mandate caskets for burial and clearly acknowledges that their use — or lack thereof — poses minimal risk to public health.
These requirements may seem amusing, but they can have dire consequences for people trying to find work. One licensing scheme even requires people who want to offer care for special needs kids to prove they are “needed” before starting up. But proving that you’re needed according to a bureaucrat’s subjective preferences is difficult.
Ursula Newell-Davis found this out the hard way when she tried to open a respite care business that would enable parents (or other caregivers) to have time to themselves. As a social worker and a mother of a special needs child, she knows how important these services are and how they are lacking in New Orleans. Several clients she had worked with as a social worker had even approached her, expressing their frustration with the state of care in Louisiana.
Nevertheless, the state denied her the ability to apply for a license on the theory that there were already enough respite businesses in the area. It deemed her “not needed” before she could even open her doors and find out for herself. This was an enormous loss to New Orleans children and parents. Without access to care, parents are forced to choose between leaving their children alone or getting no relief from the rigors of child-rearing. And children will lose access to a warm, skilled, and reliable caregiver. It’s also a huge loss to the career dreams of Ursula herself.
Louisiana’s licensing regime is wildly out of step with the state’s Right to Earn a Living law, which was passed in 2022. That law explicitly limits occupational restrictions to ones that are demonstrably necessary and carefully tailored to a legitimate governmental purpose. It’s hard to see how forcing former cosmetologists like Phyllis to get a license to shampoo hair or making social workers like Ursula prove to the government that she’s needed is “demonstrably necessary.” For that reason, people like Phyllis and Ursula are being represented by Pacific Legal Foundation to vindicate their rights to find work.
It shouldn’t take a lawsuit to get rid of patently absurd laws; licensing bodies simply should not be passing them in the first place. Too often, however, these boards are staffed by practicing members of the trade who seek to keep out competition. As a result, occupational regulations proliferate and it can take years for a lawsuit to get those regulations off of the books.
Phyllis is just at the beginning of her legal journey. Armed with the Constitution and the Right to Earn a Living Act, she might be able to topple Louisiana’s anti-competitive shampooing regime.
And perhaps with enough pushback, Louisiana regulatory bodies will see that occupational freedom, not overregulation, is in the people’s best interest.
Brown and Boden are attorneys at Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm that defends Americans’ liberty against government overreach and abuse.