The Institute for Justice has announced that:
The North Carolina Board of Cosmetic Art Examiners has agreed to allow stand-alone makeup schools to operate without an unnecessary, government-issued license. The shift, which closes a six-month-old federal lawsuit, means Charlotte makeup artist Jasna Bukvic-Bhayani is finally free to open the school of her dreams.
The case began last August, when Jasna and her aspiring makeup student, Julie Goodall, teamed up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to sue members of North Carolina’s Board of Cosmetic Art Examiners for violating their First Amendment rights. Jasna had tried opening a makeup school in 2016, but she ran afoul of the board’s requirement that she get special government permission first. This requirement would have forced Jasna to spend hundreds of hours on useless instruction and at least $10,000 on useless equipment. Jasna found this unacceptable, so her school remained closed to interested students, like Julie.
But this week, at a court-ordered mediation, the board has agreed to permit Jasna’s school to operate without requiring a license.
“No one should need a license just to talk about makeup,” said Jasna Bukvic-Bhayani. “To get the board’s license, I’d have to agree to spend hundreds of hours teaching skills my students don’t want or need to learn. I’m so excited that I am now free to teach my students skills they would actually use to do their jobs.” …
North Carolina’s licensing requirements to simply teach willing students about makeup clearly violates free-speech protections in the First Amendment.
“The U.S. Constitution protects the right to speak for a living—whether the speakers are authors, journalists or makeup artists like Jasna,” said Milad Emam, an attorney with IJ, which represented Jasna and Julie in court. “You should not need the government’s permission to voluntarily give people useful information.”
After litigating the case for six months, Jasna plans to move quickly to get her school up and running.
