Bottleneckers. William Mellor
shut down with threats of fines, injunctions, or even criminal prosecution.
Hair braiding has not been the only target of license creep by cosmetologists and their regulatory boards. Also targeted has been the all-natural grooming practice of South Asian and Middle Eastern eyebrow threading, in which practitioners remove unwanted facial hair by forming a loop with cotton thread and then quickly brushing it along the face of a client to remove hair. Like hair braiding, this increasingly popular service has existed for centuries and requires no heat, chemicals, or sharp objects; it merely uses thread that it glides along the surface of the skin. Yet cosmetology boards in several states require that eyebrow threaders obtain expensive and irrelevant Western-style cosmetology licenses.32
Dentists, too, have joined the trend of license creep. In a number of states, dental boards and dental associations have pressed for laws that require entrepreneurs who sell, provide guidance, and host the application of over-the-counter teeth-whitening kits to be fully licensed dentists. Yet it is perfectly legal for someone to take the very same products home and use them without supervision. On average, a dentist can earn $25,000 annually by performing teeth whitening, and in states where nondental entrepreneurs can still whiten teeth, dentists routinely charge two to six times more than nondentists.33
Elsewhere, veterinary boards have tried to sweep the traditional practice of horse-teeth floating into their domain. Because horses’ teeth grow throughout their lifetimes, it is necessary to file them. Floating is a safe, proven, and painless procedure for doing this, and the trade has often been passed down in families through the generations. Although floating has been practiced for centuries without requiring a government-issued license, state veterinary boards in Minnesota and Texas blocked their less expensive—and often far-better-qualified—nonveterinarian competitors from offering the service. This bottleneck is imposed even though few veterinary schools provide significant instruction in dentistry, let alone teeth floating.
In yet another example, Texas regulators, at the behest of politically powerful private investigators, defined the practice of private investigation so broadly that it even included a variety of computer repair services, forcing computer technicians in the state to obtain a costly private investigator’s license before servicing computers—or else face steep penalties. Thanks to the fallout from a legal challenge, that bottleneck was cracked open and is no longer imposed.
BEATING BACK THE CREEP
A defining characteristic of license creep is the tenuous-at-best relationship between the targeted occupation—like hair braiding—and the requirements of complying with the licensing scheme imposed upon it. Indeed, in Jestina’s case, she found the incongruity so stark that she thought an appeal to the state board would be sufficient to resolve the matter. Armed with a detailed PowerPoint presentation, she displayed illustrations of the discrepancy for the state licensing board for cosmetology/barbering, esthetics, electrology, and nail technology. The board, made up almost entirely of licensed barbers and cosmetologists, remained unmoved.34 So, Jestina had two choices: to get a license or to stop braiding.
Jestina resolved to do neither. Marshalling what she had learned to get her newly acquired degree in political science, she allied with Utah state representative Holly Richardson, who had adopted several children from Africa,35 to introduce a bill in 2011 to exempt natural hair braiding from the cosmetology license. In support of the bill, Richardson noted braiding’s importance to several ethnic communities for which it is traditional. But the representative and Jestina were no match for the cosmetologists, who mounted an aggressive lobbying campaign against the bill, flooding Richardson with e-mails and letters and turning out in full force at the legislature.36
When Jestina arrived at the capitol to testify in support of the bill, she found the hearing room overflowing with cosmetologists and cosmetology students. The latter had been told to log their required hours for the day by attending the hearing rather than going to class, and their behavior soon grew unruly. “The chairperson told the people that if they did not calm down they would have to leave,” Jestina recalled. “It was very intimidating. We had a few supporters, but it was pretty intense.”37
The message of the cosmetologists was clear: “We encourage regulation,” said Brad Masterson, a spokesman for the Professional Beauty Association (PBA). “Why should everyone else who’s doing hair have to conform to requirements and not her?”38 The PBA is the nation’s largest cosmetology trade association, boasting more than seven thousand licensed professionals and 1,900 companies as members.39 Its thirty-one-member staff includes an office dedicated to “government affairs and industry relations,”40 and the association funds the work of a nine-member government-affairs committee primarily composed of salon owners.41
Like the Utah cosmetology board, the PBA saw and continues to see any activity involving the styling of hair as being in need of regulation. Any threat to its monopoly produces a swift and coordinated response. Through a legislative tracking system, the PBA watches bills in every state and issues advocacy alerts to engage members in the respective areas.42 Members can then use the system to lobby legislators through a letter campaign. In 2012, for example, approximately twenty-one thousand letters were sent to state officials through the system in response to legislation.43 In addition to the legislative tracking system, the PBA hosts an advocacy blog to draw attention to threatening legislation or even a whiff of deregulation. For example, when former US House majority leader Eric Cantor singled out cosmetology licenses as examples of employment regulation in need of reform,44 the PBA responded with an open letter about the importance of licensing and provided “information” about deregulation to Cantor’s office.45
For in-person lobbying, the PBA organizes and provides resources to state-level coalitions. On its Web site, the association provides a list of “state captains” who lead advocacy efforts in their respective areas and serve as the PBA’s “eyes and ears on the ground when it comes to legislative matters.”46 As a state captain in Louisiana explained, “If [deregulation] comes to Louisiana, we will need to drop our shears and drop our combs, because we will need to go down to the state capitol and fight this.”47
In Indiana, that is precisely what happened. In 2011, state representative Dave Wolkins introduced House Bill 1006, which sought to eliminate the cosmetology board. In response, the PBA produced a captain-led effort in the state to storm the capitol, amassing one thousand cosmetologists to attend the committee hearing and protest the bill, thereby prompting thirty thousand phone calls, letters, and e-mails to legislative committee members.48 In response, Wolkins pulled the bill from consideration, noting, “I knew it was going to be a difficult day when all the cosmetologists were downstairs and started cheering: ‘We’ve got scissors, yes we do, we’ve got scissors, how ’bout you?’”49
A longtime staple in cosmetologists’ repertoire of bottlenecking activities is, similar to that of funeral directors, the threatening description of the “parade of horribles” that will befall consumers in the absence of licensing. In the late 1990s, for example, Gordon Miller of the National Cosmetology Association, which is now part of the PBA,50 defended California’s cosmetology requirement for hair braiders by raising the specter of disease. “They’re working in an environment where diseases and where head lice can be transmitted from person to person,” he cautioned.51
More than a decade later, the parade of horribles continued to march on. For example, in an advocacy document titled “Beware the ‘D’ Word,” Myra Irizarry, the PBA’s director of government affairs, warned:
If deregulation of cosmetology were to become a reality, any person without any formal education would be able to practice cosmetology, putting consumers at risk of injuries, burns, infections, and the spread of diseases, such as hepatitis and Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus (MRSA), due to unsanitary practices.52
Indeed, in the frenzy surrounding Richardson’s bill to exempt braiders from Utah’s cosmetology license, cosmetologists warned state legislators of just such scourges. Brenda Scharman, a representative of a cosmetology school, chairperson for government relations of a Utah beauty school association, and PBA