Anticompetitive Licensure Gets An Overdue Judicial Check-Up | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author of this post is Jon Sanders, who is Director of Regulatory Studies for the John Locke Foundation.

    The Supreme Court has taken up a North Carolina case that could have far-reaching impacts on state licensure. Given that occupational licensing is a modern-day guild system making it harder for people to find work – or find workers – that would be an effect greatly to be wished.

    The case stems from a Federal Trade Commission action to prevent the North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners from excluding non-dentists from offering cosmetic teeth-whitening services. As reported by Carolina Journal in 2012,


    The FTC took a dim view of the notion that cosmetic teeth whitening should be the exclusive province of licensed dentists:


    As is the case with other state-licensed activities, financial benefits accrue only to those providers who have cleared the hurdles of licensure, which include fulfilling costly (in time as well as money) education requirements, testing requirements, fees, etc. They not only prevent others from entering the labor market, they also make consumers suffer from higher prices. NPR noted that while teeth whitening at dentist's offices ranges from $400 to $1,300, at spas, salons, kiosks, etc. it costs only $75 to $125. (Or you could buy do-it-yourself kits at the local grocery store for much, much less.)

    George Leef wrote of the importance of this case for Forbes readers. The entire piece is worth the read, as it goes through some of the legal briefs and also discusses the dental board's defense:


    Those many instances are especially many in North Carolina, one of the more aggressive states in licensing job categories. Just crossing the border into South Carolina cuts the number of job categories subject to state licensure by over two-thirds:


    Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules, the General Assembly ought to take serious steps to de-guild the North Carolina labor market by culling licensing boards and licensed job categories, putting in sunset provisions with periodic review on the remaining boards, and resisting the self-interested pleas from other industries for new occupational licenses.