Readers of this blog may recall Cato’s filing an amicus brief for an appeal in the Eighth Circuit supporting two Missouri women’s challenge to state requirements that they become licensed as cosmetologists or barbers before being allowed to work as African-style hair braiders. Obtaining the mandatory license from the Missouri Board of Cosmetology & Barber Examiners entailed undergoing a minimum of 1,000 hours of mostly irrelevant training and passing an exam with both written and “practical” (term used loosely) components.
Not only is over 90 percent of the required training completely inapplicable to the practice of African-style hair braiding, but seven of the nine board members are barbers, cosmetologists, or cosmetology school owners with a direct financial incentive to limit competition.
None of that mattered to the three judges on the Eighth Circuit panel, who yesterday after a full year of foot-dragging issued a perfunctory opinion upholding the district court ruling in the board’s favor. Instead of finally providing two aspiring entrepreneurs their day in court before a neutral arbiter, this ruling continues the pattern of courts’ violating bedrock due-process principles by rubber-stamping occupational regulations under the flimsiest of rationales.
Beginning with a single footnote in the 1938 case United States v. Carolene Products Co., the Supreme Court has scrutinized rights violations differently depending on how it classifies the right in question and whether the violation harmed “discreet and insular minorities.” (Ironically, the plaintiffs in Niang are both women and African Americans—two classes traditionally protected under this principle.) For a law that infringes so-called “fundamental” rights, courts apply what is known as “strict scrutiny” and require governments to prove that the law is narrowly tailored toward achieving a compelling government interest.
On the other end of the spectrum are economic rights that courts have decided are less important, with infringements only being reviewed under the much less rigorous “rational basis” standard. Under this lower standard, it is up to the person challenging the law to prove that it is not “rationally related” to a “legitimate” (real or imagined) government interest.