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Do You Have a License to Braid That Hair? Unnecessary state regulations add costly burdens with no real safety benefits
By Jared Meyer of the Manhattan Institute writing for Reason. Excerpt:
"African hair braiding is a natural process of caring for hair that
does not require scissors, heat, or chemicals. Yet, despite its
substantial differences from cosmetology, 16 states still force African
hair braiders to go through onerous, time-consuming cosmetology training
programs. Getting a cosmetology license takes between 1,000 and 2,100
hours to complete and costs thousands of dollars.
Though cosmetology courses teach students how to cut and use
chemicals on hair, a possible justification for some sort of licensing
scheme, these skills are entirely unrelated to African hair braiding.
This type of braiding is not even taught in cosmetology schools.
The District of Columbia and 14 states require specific licenses
for hair braiders that are separate from cosmetology licenses. These
licenses come with mandated training that takes between six hours and
600 hours, depending on the state.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are 20 states that do not
require any licensing for African hair braiders (two have a simple
registration system). The stated justifications behind occupational
licensing schemes are always steeped in concerns for public safety. But
if African hair braiding posed legitimate safety concerns, why are
states with no training requirements not experiencing increased levels
of braiding-related injuries or death? (Hint: because it is completely
safe).
The full breakdown of hours of training and type of license required by state can be seen in the figure below:
Institute for Justice
The requirements to braid hair are completely out of line with the
risks posed to the public. Among the states that make African hair
braiders acquire a cosmetology license, the amount of training required
is between three and 19 times greater than the hours necessary to become
licensed as an emergency medical technician—a job that deals with life
and death situations.
It should come as no surprise that these requirements create high
barriers to entry. Data from 12 states and the District of Columbia show
that the more training states require, the fewer people relative to
states' black populations are professional braiders.
Institute for Justice
To highlight one example from the table, Mississippi mandates no
training and had over 1,245 registered braiders in 2012. Neighboring
Louisiana requires over 500 hours of training and, even though it has a
larger black population, had only 32 licensed braiders in 2012.
As Diana Furchtgott-Roth and I chronicle in our book Disinherited: How Washington Is Betraying America's Young,
these barriers to work have real-world consequences. When writing the
book, we spoke to Melony Armstrong, the subject of the documentary Locked Out: A Mississippi Success Story. She recounted the six-year struggle she faced to work as an African hair braider.
After being forced to comply with numerous government-imposed
hurdles, Melony filed a lawsuit against Mississippi to free herself and
other hair braiders from the state's excessive licensing requirements.
In April 2005, after a hard fight in the state legislature, Mississippi
governor Haley Barbour freed hair braiders to practice their trade
without the burdensome, pointless regulations. Now, all that is required
to be a hair braider is a $25 payment and compliance with Mississippi's
health and hygiene codes. As IJ's data show, there were thousands of
people who followed Melony's example and registered to work as African
hair braiders in Mississippi.
Occupational licensing is a common way to keep people out of work. Countless occupations, from handymen to interior designers,
face barriers to work that do little to protect public safety. IJ's
report shows that states with extensive licensing requirements should
simply allow African hair braiders to work. And to anyone worried about
public safety, I challenge you to find one incident of death by
braiding."
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