Louisiana State Board of Cosmetology (LSBC) Chairman, Jennifer Reed, prepares to explain to her colleagues that “upon legal guidance” it is “in our best interest” to join the Louisiana Attorney General’s Occupational Licensing Review Program (OLRP). Reed made her commentary at the LSBC meeting of Monday, January 13, 2025.
Today (Thursday, January 16, 2025), we’re beginning a series on the LSBC, on which we have extensively reported in the past. Our most recent post was on December 8, 2024, and it entailed the LSBC’s celebration of its courtroom victory over hair braiders trying to practice in Louisiana with no “alternative hair permit.”
The permit requires 500 hours of classroom instruction, and only about 36 people in the entire State of Louisiana hold such a permit with all other hair braiders technically practicing illegally.
Mississippi, by contrast, requires a mere annual registration and the completing of a brief questionnaire on sanitation to legally practice hair braiding in that state.
Needless to say, that minimal requirement has resulted in 6,700 registered hair braiders (as of 2022) in Mississippi according to Empower Mississippi.
In contrast to Louisiana, which forces its hair braiders to work out of garages and stay on the down low and thereby be forced to avoid paying taxes on their technically-illegal work, Mississippi hair braiders are free to be out in the open, advertise their services, and proudly pay taxes to the State of Mississippi as citizens who can boast openly about the quality of their work in their chosen profession.
Louisiana, meanwhile, forces its hair braiders to feel like nothing short of criminals and, make no mistake, the LSBC can and will fine them if they’re caught practicing without the permit requiring 500 hours of classroom instruction. We have videotaped them assessing such fines!
As outlined in our prior feature linked above, Ms. Anisia Parks, who owns Headliners NOLA, and who faithfully attends LSBC meetings and voices any concerns she may have, has stated that Louisiana’s permit requirement, with her emphasis on a “lack of enforcement” thereof, causes many hair braiders to, “work underground or leave for Mississippi or leave for Texas.”
While the LSBC did prevail against the Institute for Justice’s (IJ’s) litigation against it, the cost of victory was not cheap! Once the Louisiana Supreme Court declined to accept IJ’s Writ Application (meaning the litigation was over) and the period for reconsideration was up, we made public records requests for all legal invoices pertaining to that litigation.
We recently obtained all of those invoices, and the LSBC spent a total (with court costs, which are relatively minor but which can be recovered from IJ since LSBC prevailed) of $156,603.18 fending off IJ’s litigation.
Some folk have contended that IJ may have prevailed had it been willing to fully conform with Louisiana’s Right to Earn a Living Act, which became effective on August 1, 2022, which was just over three (3) years after IJ filed its litigation against the LSBC.
Instead, IJ opted to merely continue on with its litigation founded upon the relatively straightforward contention that the LSBC was violating Louisiana’s Constitution in erecting excessive and onerous regulation which infringes upon Louisiana citizens’ ability to earn a living free of same.
The “game changer” for occupational licensing across the United States is this landmark decision by the U. S. Supreme Court in the North Carolina Board of Dentistry v. the FTC. From that U. S. Supreme Court decision:
State-action antitrust immunity does not apply to a state board that places restraints on an occupation when a majority of its decision-makers, elected by others in the occupation, are active market participants in the occupation and the state does not actively supervise the board nor has the board acted pursuant to a clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed state policy.
What the above wording means essentially is that Louisiana’s occupational licensing Boards and Commissions cannot act in the renegade, “we’re the only Sheriffs in this town, and you do what we say or else” mentality that has been so prevalent among many of those agencies.
Further, the downside to engaging in such mentality, especially when combined with acts which reflect that mentality (of which we’ve historically noted no shortage of on the part of LSBC Members), may open up individual Board and Commission members to personal liability.
Perhaps as a result of such concerns, the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office formed the Louisiana Occupational Licensing Review Program (OLRP).
Longer-term visitors to our blog may recall our coverage of the program when we dropped in on the fine folks at the Louisiana State Board of Veterinarian Medicine on April 6, 2023, and we filmed Joe Donahue (of the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office) explaining the program in great detail to the Board. Perhaps knowing they were facing imminent litigation by the Pelican Institute on behalf of two veterinarians, that Board wasted no time enrolling in the program.
We would note that the Pelican Institute’s lead attorney, Sarah Harbison, has been attending LSBC meetings now for about five months. We’ll provide more insight on her presence in future installments of this series.
For now, bear in mind that the Veterinarian Board considered the AG’s program on April 6, 2023. The AG’s Office had set a deadline for enrollment of December 31, 2024; however, it also allowed for the LSBC to opt to enroll at its regularly-scheduled meeting of January 6, 2025. That opportunity was rebuffed in rather dramatic and authoritative fashion, particularly by LSBC Executive Director Steve Young, at that meeting.
Here is the full, unedited video of the LSBC considering the proposal and all of the reasons they provided for not desiring to participate in the program:
January 6, 2025 discussion of the AG’s OLRP and its reasons for resoundingly and unanimously rejecting the AG’s invitation to enroll even after the 12/31/24 deadline.
In the above video, one LSBC member, Michael Anderson of Shreveport, read the AG’s material and noted the fact that declining to be in the program could open the Members up to personal liability.
We can only assume that his concerns resulted in post-meeting discussions. Those discussions, in turn, prompted the LSBC to send out notice of a “Special Call Meeting” only one week after the above meeting. That notice went out on Thursday, January 9, 2025 at 10:30 a.m.
The meeting was brief but certainly noteworthy as Chairman Jennifer Reed (of Eunice) indicated that, “based on guidance we’ve obtained and us being told, ‘it’s in the best interest of our Board, both as a Board and individually, to be legally-protected by this program,’ so basically is the reason for that is why we’re here today.” Let’s again take a look at the full, unedited video of the entire meeting:
January 13, 2025 LSBC meeting in its entirety focusing solely and exclusively upon whether to reverse course and enroll in the AG’s OLRP.
As noted in the above video, the cost of enrollment (for 18 months) is approximately $121,000, which LSBC Executive Director Steve Young indicates will create such a hardship that the Board will need to make installment payments and that, by enrolling, “I will have to let a couple of people go.”
Perhaps it’s noteworthy that the LSBC had no qualms whatsoever expending $156,603.18 fighting hair braiders ability to make a living, with nobody even bringing up the cost of the litigation nor any hardship created by expending those funds, yet all of a sudden there’s deep anxiety over expending an amount $35,000 less than that for enrolling in the AG program.
Is that not incredible? After all, nobody on the LSBC gave a flying flip when Wadvisha Chavis had to close her hair braiding salon as the LSBC mandated she have a licensed cosmetologist on premises. Nobody cared about the “hardship” that imposed upon her or the six kids she admitted struggling to raise with her hair braiding operations helping significantly in that regard, but, boy, once a couple of bureaucrats may face possible job losses, it’s a full-blown crisis!
We believe that any individuals who may be let go by Young, and we’re not even sure of his ability to do that given that only he and Assistant Director Tisha Butler are unclassified employees of the Board, can tout to any prospective private-sector employer that one of their biggest career accomplishments was keeping Louisiana hair braiders from earning a living. We’d like to see the reaction of any private company to whom the bureaucrats may apply upon them making such a touting of the accomplishment as part of the job hiring process!
This feature is the first installment of several which we will produce leading up to the 2025 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature.
Gov. Landry is graded as an “A” on the subject of tax reform, and we’ve certainly uttered his praises in that regard.
On the subject of occupational licensing reform, however, Gov. Landry’s grade is a “D-.”
Quite frankly, it would be an “F” were it not for the fact that, mere weeks before the 2024 Legislative Session, in front of a crowd of approximately 300 folk in attendance at the Pelican Institute’s Solution Summit, he committed to reducing and eliminating occupational licensing barriers that are oppressing lower-income Louisiana residents’ ability to earn a living.
Despite his public statement, when the 2024 Legislative Session actually convened, Landry, along with House Speaker Phillip DeVillier, and House Speaker Pro Tempore Mike Johnson, actively lobbied to kill Rep. Lauren Ventrella’s bill to do just like Texas has done and reduce the number of hours required for a cosmetology license from 1,500 to 1,000.
Just as we praised Landry for his tax reform initiatives, we didn’t hold back in lambasting Landry, Johnson, and others who actively lobbied to kill Ventrella’s bill.
We expect better of Gov. Landry in the 2025 Legislative Session entailing cosmetology-related bills that we can assure everyone will be filed in the days leading up to that April 14, 2025 Session.
It’s on Landry to see if he can raise his Occupational Licensing grade above its present “D-.” After all, it really sticks out like a sore thumb when contrasted with his “A” grade on tax reform!
