The Right to Earn a Living Deep in the Heart of Texas

The same day three weeks ago that the Supreme Court ruled on same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges), our friends at the Institute for Justice claimed a strong victory in favor of individual rights and economic freedom in an important case before the Texas Supreme Court (a.k.a. SCOTEX).

In Patel v. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, the court was faced with a state constitutional challenge to a licensing requirement that hair threaders acquire cosmetology licenses -- to the tune of nearly $9,000 and 750 hours -- when such classes “are not related to health and safety or what threaders actually do.”

Threading is a South Asian and Middle Eastern beautification practice whereby a person removes eyebrow hair through the skilled application of taut cotton threads tied in a small loop. Licensing requirements have recently come under scrutiny from both Democratic and Republican leaders, who claim that they unduly restrict trade and burden the poor.

In Patel, SCOTEX interpreted the “due course of law” provision of the Texas Constitution to protect economic liberties. This despite the court’s jurisprudence in this area having been plagued by the application of inconsistent standards. State law had recognized three applicable standards of scrutiny: the “real and substantial relation” test, the rational-basis-plus-review-of-evidence test, and the good ol' rational basis test. The expansive language of the Texas Due Course Clause would suggest that courts should be more skeptical of state regulations than they are under the rational basis test (which is similar to its federal counterpart in that essentially all laws survive such "scrutiny"). 

And indeed here, the court adopted a more restrictive form of review -- apparently yet another new standard -- looking at whether “a statute’s effect as a whole is so unreasonably burdensome that it becomes oppressive in relation to the underlying governmental interest.” Applying that test, the court found the cosmetology requirements had “no rational connection to reasonable safety and sanitation requirements” and invalidated the licensing scheme as it applies to hair threaders.

After enjoying the majority opinion, don't overlook the concurrence by Justice Don Willett, joined by two other colleagues on the nine-member court:

This case concerns far more than whether Ashish Patel can pluck unwanted hair with a strand of thread.  This case is fundamentally about the American Dream and the unalienable human right to pursue happiness without curtsying to government on bended knee.  It is about whether government can connive with rent-seeking factions to ration liberty unrestrained, and whether judges must submissively uphold even the most risible encroachments. 

George Will recently praised Justice Willett's approach -- favorably comparing him to Chief Justice John Roberts (a low bar, to be sure) -- particularly for his treatment of Lochner v. New York (1905). Questions of substantive economic liberties always bring about discussion of that famous case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down maximum-hours regulations regarding New York City bakers as an imposition on the constitutional freedom of contract. The New Deal Court effectively overruled Lochner in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937), paving the way for Carolene Products v. United States (1938), which bifurcated our rights and protected so-called fundamental rights more than others (including economic and property rights).

That Lochner was wrong is one of the few points of agreement between conservative and progressive legal scholars, both of which would rather that "unelected black-robed philosopher-kings" stop striking down the people's laws. (Somehow, progressives have no problem with Brown v. Board of Education, or Roe v. Wade, or indeed Obergefell, all of which invalidated state laws -- and conservatives were dismayed when the Supreme Court saved RobertsCare in NFIB v. Sebelius.) Chief Justice Roberts invoked Lochner 16 times(!) in his dissenting opinion in Obergefell.

As Justice Willett notes, “The Lochner bogeyman is a mirage but a ready broadside aimed at those who apply rational basis rationally. . . . The Constitution does protect economic liberty.” To Justice Willett -- the most Twitter-friendly jurist in the land (also a low bar) -- the fundamental question in Patel and similar cases is “one of constitutional limitations”: “Should judges blindly accept government’s health-and-safety rationale, or instead probe more deeply to ensure the aim is not suppressing competition to benefit entrenched interests?” Willett would have presumed the question in favor of individual liberty, rather than presuming the constitutionality of the statute as the majority opinion did (before rebutting that presumption) to conclude that “[t]hreaders with no license are less menacing than government with unlimited license.”

So kudos to IJ, to SCOTEX, and to liberty. June 26 was a great day for judicial engagement and judicial review across the land.