Evan Bernick of the Institute for Justice explains in a Huffington Post column that a federal judge has ruled the state of Texas “can’t force people to do useless things.”
The state of Texas told Isis Brantley that she needed to spend thousands of hours taking useless classes and thousands of dollars on useless equipment before she would be permitted to teach hairbraiding at her own school. On Wednesday Judge Sam Sparks told Texas that that was unconstitutional, in a momentous decision that shows what judicial engagement can do for entrepreneurs everywhere.
Isis is an expert African hairbraider with decades of experience teaching everyone from out-of-work women seeking a new skill to state-licensed cosmetologists interested in learning the art of African hairbraiding. On June 25, 2013, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation notified Isis that, in order to teach hairbraiding at her own school, she must first become a state-licensed barber instructor, a process that takes months and costs thousands of dollars. The requirements include completing a 1,500-hour curriculum that is wholly irrelevant to African hairbraiding. Would-be barber schools also must comply with a number of facility and equipment requirements that would cost over $20,000. The Institute for Justice joined with Isis to file suit in the Western District of Texas, contending that the Texas scheme violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees every American the right to earn an honest living, free of arbitrary interference.
The government apparently hoped that Judge Sparks would do what judges all too often do when they apply the so-called “rational-basis test,” the default rule in constitutional cases that do not involve rights that the Supreme Court has labeled “fundamental,” like speech, religion, voting and privacy. Judges in rational-basis cases routinely abandon their constitutional duty to seek truth and instead work to rationalize the government’s actions. In seeking to defend the challenged provisions, the government admitted that the provisions “may not be sensible or particularly well crafted” but argued that those who drafted them “could have believed that they furthered legitimate interests in public health and safety,” even if they actually did not. The government invoked Williamson v. Lee Optical (1955), a case in which the Supreme Court upheld a law barring people who were not licensed optometrists or opthalmologists from replacing broken lenses and preventing out-of-state eyeglass retailers from advertising — in the name of public health and safety, of course.
Fortunately for Isis (and unlike the Supreme Court in Lee Optical), Judge Sparks engaged in a genuine search for the truth, focusing on real evidence rather than hypotheticals to justify the government’s actions.
Let’s hope this case bodes well for other African hair braiders who’ve been blocked by unnecessary licensing restrictions.
