On January 5, 2015, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas has struck attempts of regulation by the Texas Board of Licensing and Regulation to regulate hair-braiders.
Texas, both through state and federal courts, seems to be leading the way in occupational deregulation. In June of 2015 the State Supreme Court of Texas has struck as unconstitutional, on state constitutional grounds, eyebrow threading regulation - I wrote about it earlier in this blog, here and here.
Non-sensical hair-braiding regulation of hair-braiding has already been mocked by Jon Stewart in his Comedy Central show, possibly, that's why courts and judges who do not want to become the laughinstock of the nation, start striking down hairbraiding regulations - as the Western District of Texas federal court did. I guess, comedians should take more court cases, it will greatly improve the quality of constitutional precedents in this country.
Hair-braiders challenged regulation of their 5000-year old trade with imposition of unnecessary and expensive training, office and equipment requirements that are not needed for the actual hair-braiding in Arkansas, Washington and in Iowa.
It is interesting to see how the predominantly white federal courts will decide this predominantly African-American hairstyling regulation.
It is also illustrative that individuals and businesses start to increasingly take the alleged "government regulation boards" to court to strike down attempts of private interest groups to quash competition, deprive people of their livelihoods and decimate consumer choices for more diverse and cheaper services.
Since the government, while pretending to fight for "public safety", provides no evidence that public safety suffers, but instead blatantly advances arguments of "rational basis", "purely economic regulation", and "it must be right if the government says so - if if the government decided to favor one group of people over the other with economic favors", and, when regulated occupations have reached over 1/3 of jobs in the U.S. economy
(as cited in North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners v FTC, a February 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case that stripped dentists of antitrust "state immunity" for their regulating activities)
and regulation of occupation stifles competition, entrepreneurship and economic development in the U.S., contributing to poverty, economic stagnation and public unrest - occupational deregulation is a writing on the wall, and is coming fast.
THE EVOLUTION OF JUDICIAL TYRANNY IN THE UNITED STATES:
"If the judges interpret the laws themselves, and suffer none else to interpret, they may easily make, of the laws, [a shredded] shipman's hose!" - King James I of England, around 1616.
“No class of the community ought to be allowed freer scope in the expression or publication of opinions as to the capacity, impartiality or integrity of judges than members of the bar. They have the best opportunities of observing and forming a correct judgment. They are in constant attendance on the courts. Hundreds of those who are called on to vote never enter a court-house, or if they do, it is only at intervals as jurors, witnesses or parties. To say that an attorney can only act or speak on this subject under liability to be called to account and to be deprived of his profession and livelihood by the very judge or judges whom he may consider it his duty to attack and expose, is a position too monstrous to be entertained for a moment under our present system,” Justice Sharwood in Ex Parte Steinman and Hensel, 95 Pa 220, 238-39 (1880).
“This case illustrates to me the serious consequences to the Bar itself of not affording the full protections of the First Amendment to its applicants for admission. For this record shows that [the rejected attorney candidate] has many of the qualities that are needed in the American Bar. It shows not only that [the rejected attorney candidate] has followed a high moral, ethical and patriotic course in all of the activities of his life, but also that he combines these more common virtues with the uncommon virtue of courage to stand by his principles at any cost.
It is such men as these who have most greatly honored the profession of the law. The legal profession will lose much of its nobility and its glory if it is not constantly replenished with lawyers like these. To force the Bar to become a group of thoroughly orthodox, time-serving, government-fearing individuals is to humiliate and degrade it.” In Re Anastaplo, 18 Ill. 2d 182, 163 N.E.2d 429 (1959), cert. granted, 362 U.S. 968 (1960), affirmed over strong dissent, 366 U.S. 82 (1961), Justice Black, Chief Justice Douglas and Justice Brennan, dissenting.
" I do not believe that the practice of law is a "privilege" which empowers Government to deny lawyers their constitutional rights. The mere fact that a lawyer has important responsibilities in society does not require or even permit the State to deprive him of those protections of freedom set out in the Bill of Rights for the precise purpose of insuring the independence of the individual against the Government and those acting for the Government”. Lathrop v Donohue, 367 US 820 (1961), Justice Black, dissenting.
"The legal profession must take great care not to emulate the many occupational groups that have managed to convert licensure from a sharp weapon of public defense into blunt instrument of self-enrichment". Walter Gellhorn, "The Abuse of Occupational Licensing", University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 44 Issue 1, September of 1976.
“Because the law requires that judges no matter how corrupt, who do not act in the clear absence of jurisdiction while performing a judicial act, are immune from suit, former Judge Ciavarella will escape liability for the vast majority of his conduct in this action. This is, to be sure, against the popular will, but it is the very oath which he is alleged to have so indecently, cavalierly, baselessly and willfully violated for personal gain that requires this Court to find him immune from suit”, District Judge A. Richard Caputo in H.T., et al, v. Ciavarella, Jr, et al, Case No. 3:09-cv-00286-ARC in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Document 336, page 18, November 20, 2009. This is about judges who were sentencing kids to juvenile detention for kickbacks.
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