Op-Ed: Occupational licensing reform could bloom in Louisiana

Louisiana is a state that few can rival. The culture, the food and passion for enjoying life, a state embodied in the phrase laissez les bons temps rouler or let the good times roll. This cherished mindset is what makes Louisiana so special and a good place to call home.

But for a state where people value personal freedom, the government continues to enforce unnecessary restrictions that hold people back.

Some of the most problematic restrictions are occupational licenses. An occupational license is a permit issued by the government that allows someone to work in a particular field. Licensing was once reserved for professions like doctors, lawyers and accountants, but today in Louisiana nearly one in five workers must get an occupational license before they can legally do their job.

Proponents of licensing say the rules are in place to promote health and safety. But there is little evidence licensure protects consumers or improves quality. Instead, the process often ends up creating monopolies, benefiting the few — mostly industry insiders — at everyone else’s expense.

Take, for example, the license needed to be a florist. Unbelievably, this was a license required for commercially arranging, cutting or selling flowers. Louisiana was the only state in the nation to require such a license and working without it could result in a hefty fine.

In 2003, the Institute for Justice, the public interest law firm we work at, filed a lawsuit on behalf of Sandy Meadows, a would-be florist in Baton Rouge. Sandy had been fired from her job because state inspectors found out she had been arranging flowers without a proper license.

The state insisted that Sandy obtain a license, which required passing a highly subjective exam that was graded by existing florists in the state with a vested interest in keeping out competition.

There was never any indication that Sandy’s floral arrangements were negatively impacting public health, nor could there be. But the state didn’t care.

Tragically, Sandy passed away before her case was heard and denied justice and the right to earn an honest living.

IJ, as have others in the state, continued the fight against the florist license, both with additional lawsuits and in working with the Legislature, testifying in favor of ending this unfair practice.

Only now, over 20 years since we first took up the cause with Sandy, the issue is mostly put to rest. Governor Landry recently signed House Bill 933, a bill that ends the need for an exam to be a florist. We say "mostly" though because even with these positive changes there remains a need to pay a fee to arrange, cut or sell flowers in Louisiana.

A 20-year fight to end a license that has no public merit.

Unfortunately, there are many other licenses out there that hurt Louisianans.

According to our report License to Work, the average license for low-and middle-income jobs in the state takes 175 days of education and experience. And this training can be expensive, pricing out people before they are even in the door.

For instance, cosmetology is one of the state’s most popular licenses. In Louisiana, it takes at least 1,500 hours of training to get a cosmetology license —10 times the training the state requires for EMTs. A 2021 study conducted by IJ found that on average, a cosmetology program in the state costs $14,308, while the average student takes out $8,787 in federal student loans. But despite such a hefty investment, many cosmetologists barely earn enough to get by: Half of cosmetologists make less than $19,680 a year.

Many states have made the system fairer for aspiring workers in the beauty industry by exempting safe beauty services from licensing and reducing the training hours required for a license.

Louisiana can do better. There are less burdensome alternatives to licensing, such as voluntary certification, that protect consumers without blocking entry into the workforce. The people of Louisiana deserve to have access to jobs based on skill and consumer demand, not arbitrary governmental requirements. Similarly, customers deserve to have more options, options that are not artificially suppressed by burdensome licensing regimes that make goods and services more expensive.

Repealing the licensing exam for florists is a good first step. The state should continue to trim other unnecessary occupational licenses so workers have every opportunity to flourish.

Meagan Forbes is a Louisiana native and the Director of Legislation and Senior Legislative Counsel and Phillip Suderman is the Communication Project Manager at the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Va.