Two N.C. Licensing Battles End Well | 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 and a contributor to the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

    RALEIGH     North Carolina is one of the more aggressive states in the nation in licensing occupations. This is a significant impediment to freedom in a state that once boasted, and ought to be able to again, of being "First in Freedom."

    This is a state that recognizes — as a self-evident right, plainly obvious to all — the right of all persons to "the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor." It is prominent in the North Carolina Constitution: Article 1, Section 1.

    Occupational licensing is practically a return to the medieval guild system, denying those fruits to many to the detriment of even more. It effectively turns incumbent service providers into a cartel, artificially boosting their earnings at the expense of consumers and the would-be competitors kept out. Meanwhile, the safety and quality benefits supposed to result from licensure tend to be illusory.

    For those reasons and more, I have urged state leaders to rethink North Carolina's heavy regulation of occupations. A new political direction in favor of freedom and job creation would be compelled to deguild the state's economy.

    Two recently concluded, long-running legal disputes over actions by licensing boards in North Carolina should give responsible leaders even more justification to rethink the state's approach to licensure.


    My "Rights & Regulation Update" warned last October of a pending U.S. Supreme Court decision over the North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners actions excluding nondentists from offering cosmetic teeth-whitening services. This week the justices announced their decision. Carolina Journal reports:


    Even the dissent, as CJ pointed out, acknowledged the anti-competitive nature of the dentistry board and licensing boards in general. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia were concerned about the confusing repercussions of the ruling, warning it would lead to "a morass. Determining whether a state agency is structured in a way that militates against regulatory capture is no easy task, and there is reason to fear that today's decision will spawn confusion."

    Still,


    Here is how the tooth-whitening exclusion benefited licensed dentists and harmed consumers and competition. Costs ranged from $400 to $1,300 at dentist offices, as opposed to $75 to $125 at day spas, mall kiosks, salons, etc.

    Also, this month the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition adopted new guidelines that will allow people to give "ordinary diet advice without a government license." The change puts an end to diet blogger Steve Cooksey's free-speech lawsuit against the board, first reported by Carolina Journal in 2012.

    The Cooksey case provided the background for my Carolina Cronyism report on occupational licensing:


    Such anti-competitive overreach and protectionism — serving the interests of the licensees and not the general public — is commonplace. As the justices wrote, "Professional and occupational licensing requirements have often been used in such a way."

    The General Assembly could help consumers, excluded competitors, and the cause of freedom and job creation by (1) greatly reducing licensing boards and licensed job categories, (2) putting in sunset provisions with periodic review on the remaining boards, and (3) resisting the self-interested pleas from other industries for new occupational licenses.