California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bills 2888 and 701 on Friday, which create mandatory minimum sentences for people convicted of sex crimes.
The bills came in response to the outcry over Brock Turner’s lenient sentence. As I’ve argued previously, that outcry was largely justified—Turner did get a comparatively light prison sentence, though the fact that he has to register as a sex offender is no small thing.
But mandatory minimums are a terrible policy in general. Indeed, there’s a growing bipartisan consensus among policy experts and politicians on the right and the left that reforming mandatory minimum sentencing is something that needs to happen if the country is ever going to fix its costly and immoral mass incarceration problem.
The California bill flies in the face of this consensus. That’s not just my opinion: as Elizabeth Nolan Brown notes, even many leftist-feminists are vocally opposed to mandatory minimums for sex crimes because there’s no evidence they reduce crime.
In a letter explaining why he was signing the bill, Gov. Brown insisted that “as a general matter, I am opposed to adding more mandatory minimum sentences. Nevertheless, I am signing AB 2888, because I believe it brings a measure of parity to sentencing for criminal acts that are substantially similar.”
The new law specifically prohibits judges from letting perpetrators get off with probation if they have been convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious or intoxicated person. While this may have produced a better outcome in the Turner case, forcing judges to send more people to prison is bad public policy. It will exacerbate all kinds of problems with the criminal justice system.
Amid pressure from the public and Congress, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) may delay it’s decision to put the subtance Kratom on the federal government’s list of Schedule I drugs and allow for an extended public comment period, according to a U.S. Congressman who met with the acting DEA administrator on Friday.
Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin met with acting DEA Administrator Chuck Rosenberg over the proposed ban on Kratom—a leaf from Southeast Asia that has been used for pain-relief for centures—that was expected to go into effect on Friday. “It appears the DEA will instead open up a modified comment process before a final decision will be made,” Pocan’s office said in a statement. “While we do not know the exacting timing or details of the new comment period for kratom, Acting Administrator Rosenberg assured Congressman Pocan that we will find out more in the near future.”
On Aug. 30, the DEA announced it would be temporarily placing Kratom on the list of Schedule I drugs “to avoid an imminent hazard to public safety.” As Reason’s Jacob Sullum explained, it was a bad and totally predictable decision:
Kratom is a pain-relieving leaf that acts as a stimulant or a sedative, depending on the dose. But the most important thing to know about kratom, if you want to understand the DEA’s reasoning, is that it’s not from here. Kratom comes from a tree, Mitragyna speciosa, that is native to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, and Papua New Guinea. It has gained a following in the United States only recently, hawked by online merchants and head shops as an herbal medicine, “dietary supplement,” or legal high. As far as the DEA is concerned, the fact that people in other countries have used kratom for centuries to ease pain, boost work performance, and wean themselves from opiate addiction counts for nothing. All the DEA needs to know is that our shores have been invaded by a foreign drug that is increasingly popular among Americans as a home remedy and recreational intoxicant. From the DEA’s perspective, that is intolerable, regardless of the drug’s hazards or benefits.
News of the impending ban infuriated U.S. consumers of Kratom, who have lit up phone lines on Capitol Hill to complain. Members of Congress have responded in suit. On Friday, Democratic Senators Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Ron Wyden sent a letter to the DEA espressing concern that the agency’ did not leave “a sufficient amount of time for public comment on a drug that, according to recent scientific studies, may actually be an effective substance to help combat the opioid epidemic.”
“While we understand there are times when public safety demands that your agency act quickly on scheduling decisions, we believe that in this instance additional time for the scientific community, public health officials, and other members of the public to comment is warranted and may prove to be in the interest of public health and safety,” the senators added. “Since 1980, our federal prison population has exploded by nearly 800 percent. This increase is a result of draconian drug policies that continue to place nonviolent drug offenders behind bars. We should not, in haste and without adequate opportunity for comment and analysis, place substances in categories that may be inconsistent with their medical value and potential for abuse.”
If you like time travel shows, shows that look like time travel shows, and shows based on older shows and films, this could be the TV season for you.
Glenn Garvin reviews five of them:
In 1966, when CBS unveiled a show called It’s About Time in which a pair of astronauts pierce the space-time continuum and discover that the human race is descended from a couple of cavemen played by Joe E. Ross and Imogene Coca, the old Philadelphia Bulletin was so unhinged that it called for congressional hearings. While I certainly share the conventional civic wisdom that TV critics should have subpoena power, not to mention droit du seigneur, I believe the Bulletin was a little bit ahead of the curve. A congressional investigation of time-travel shows wasn’t probably warranted until 1992, when the characters of NBC’s Qauntum Leap jumped back to the 1950s to put the idea of real estate into the head of a 12-year-old Donald Trump. If that didn’t call for a “Have you no decency, sir?” moment…
Anyway, I wonder what the folks at the Bulletin would have made of television this week, which is mostly one long orgy of time travel, both literal and metaphorical. As William Faulkner might have said if he’d had any Nielsen smarts, the past is never dead, it’s not even in reruns yet.
Police arrested an East Tennessee University student who wore a gorilla mask to a Black Lives Matter rally. The student was handing out bananas and trying to provoke event participants (this was not, as I initially suspected, some kind of pro-Harambe thing). Note that the rally took place in the campus’s “free speech” area. According to video footage of the incident, the BLM folks left the student alone, but somebody else called the police. The student was charged with “civil rights intimidation,” which seems very concerning from a First Amendment perspective.
California Gov. Jerry Brown signs the so-called Brock Turner bill into law, creating mandatory minimums for sex crimes.
Mizzou suspended a fraternity because some members were suspected of yelling racial slurs at a group of black women. But the police report from the altercation suggests to me that the fraternity members didn’t actually do anything wrong, and some of the black women were themselves quite hostile.
Claremont calls off its annual Speedo / bikini hike because the event was deemed “non-inclusive” toward people who aren’t in good physical shape.
The University of Michigan’s pronoun policy has backfired in spectacular fashion.
Northern Michigan University backs down: students can discuss self-harm without fear of being disciplined.
The Great Clown Scare of 2016 began last month, and a larger set of creepy-clown sightings have been flaring up in different spots around the globe for a few years now. But rumors of malevolent jesters have circulated much longer than that. The size and intensity of the current clown panic may be unprecedented, but the phenomenon itself is not.
In the spring of 1981, according to Benjamin Radford’s recent book Bad Clowns, “police in Brookline, Massachusetts, issued an all-points bulletin asking officers to watch for a vehicle containing potential child abductors. The vehicle was distinctive: an older-model van with a broken headlight, no hubcaps, and ladders on the side. It was also full of clowns. Several children reported that clowns had tried to lure them into the dark van with promises of candy, and the sinister white-faced vagabonds were later reported lurking near Brookline’s Lawrence Elementary School.”
Similar reports soon popped up in other parts of the country—Omaha, Kansas City, Pittsburgh. A story in the Pittsburgh Press noted that in some of these cities, the rumors were coming from predominantly black parts of town, and the paper cited some speculation that they were a local reaction to the series of killings in Atlanta that seemed to be targeting African-American children. The Fortean writer Loren Coleman dubbed the mystery harlequinns “phantom clowns,” and the name stuck.
It probably wasn’t the first clown panic, and it certainly wasn’t the last. In 1982, a newspaper columnist in the Pittsburgh area was relaying “unfounded rumors of clown sightings in the vicinity of North Franklin Elementary School.” That might have just been an echo of the stories that had hit the same city a year earlier, but before long the rumors were appearing in other parts of America. In 1985, for instance, clown gangs were said to be stalking Phoenix. In 1991, kids in New Jersey started claiming that a man called Homey the Clown—yes, like the In Living Color character—was lurking through the streets, searching for kids to snatch. The Homey rumors prompted Jan Harold Brunvand, author of several books on urban legends, to ask, “How long before the phantom clowns of New Jersey start to show up in other communities?” Not long at all: Homey was soon terrorizing the kids of Chicago too. (When another wave of scary-clown sightings hit the Windy City in 2008, Chicagoans with long memories started reminiscing about Homey.)
Just as the tales of ’81 may have been linked to the Atlanta murders, the later legends often went hand-in-hand with larger panics. The ’80s were a time of heightened anxieties about missing children, and the kidnapper-clowns fit in easily with the Satanic cults and other malign forces allegedly chasing the country’s kids. In the ’90s, rumors in Central America combined the urban legend of the clowns with the urban legend that a conspiracy was seizing children to steal their organs. And of course some of these rumors were basically age-old folktales with clowns inserted into the villain role. If you’ve heard any of those myths about gypsies grabbing white children, then a lot of the clown lore will sound familiar.
None of these reports, in any of these cities, were ever substantiated. Always a Boogieman, never a John Wayne Gacy.
Is there anything different about the current scare? Well, there’s the sheer size of it. There’s the role the Internet has played in quickening and intensifying it. And there may be something else. Radford points out that in the early cases, “only young children reported seeing [the phantom clowns]; adults almost never encountered them.” But this time around, some twentysomething pranksters have been arrested for making false reports, and in one case for posing as one of the clowns. I can’t say for sure, but it’s possible that the kids are carrying less of the load this time.
Still, children have been doing the bulk of the storytelling. And that takes us to the A/V part of this post. You see, in addition to all those playground and Facebook rumors, there is a whole YouTube mini-genre of hoax creepy-clown videos made by kids.
Here’s one that predates the present panic. (It’s from 2010.) A couple of kids are chatting away near an overpass. One puts down his camera to answer the phone. The camera keeps running while he talks, and that just happens to be the moment a mysterious clown emerges from the tunnel below the bridge, then silently retreats:
As you’d expect, the genre has really taken off since the current clown scare began. From last week, for example, here is a boy “finding” a clown mask in the woods and pretending to freak out about it:
This next vid is unusual in that a parent participates in it. It’s part of a whole series of clips in which the family looks for clowns in the woods; I haven’t watched the whole sequence, but of what I’ve seen so far they haven’t discovered anything spookier than a footprint. There is a chance that the people producing it are sincere. There is also a chance that they’re building toward a final installment that’ll end with a neighbor jumping out in a clown suit:
Our final selection purports to show an actual clown attack. The young auteurs who made it have got that Blair Witch shaky-cam aesthetic down pat, but they haven’t embraced the Blair Witch idea of letting the monster lurk unseen. They also ignore another Hollywood notion—that if one of your pals is standing around looking bored, you should try to keep him out of your shot. That just makes it more great, of course. This one is definitely my favorite:
That last effort reminds me of an incident in Brunvand’s article: “One child, who later retracted his story, told police that a clown holding a machete in one hand and an Uzi machine gun in the other fired five shots at him before he drove him off with his bookbag.” (That must’ve been one hell of a bookbag.)
What do these videos show us? For one thing, pretty much everyone involved is clearly having fun. It’s easy to focus on the fear-filled side of a scare—that’s why we call ’em scares!—but surely one thing driving these little rumor-manias is the sheer pleasure of spreading a spooky story. The New Jersey kid who made up that Uzi yarn 25 years ago was probably having a blast too, at least up until the point where he was talking to skeptical cops instead of, say, some younger kids on the playground.
The videos also drive home how much of this comes down to children being children. Kids like to play pranks. Kids like to tell stories. Kids like to hear stories. Kids scare easily. Kids don’t always have well-honed bullshit filters. Kids eventually turn into grown-ups, and you know what? We don’t necessarily change that much in the process.
(For past editions of the Friday A/V Club, go here.)
Footage of the fatal police shooting of 6-year-old Jeremy Mardis in Louisiana in September 2015 at the end of a police pursuit was released this week as part of the evidentiary hearing—two of the cops involved were indicted on murder charges for the killing. You can watch the video below.
Michael Edmonson, the superintendent of Louisiana State Police, called the footage “the most disturbing thing I’ve seen.”
The marshals who shot at the car say they were unaware that a 6-year-old was in the car. CNN reports that the chase started when the marshals “witnessed an argument between a man and his girlfriend in front of a local bar.”
Both marshals also had previous records, with one of them having been indicted for aggravated rape and both named in a number of civil suits alleging a range of misconduct. The defense lawyer for at least one officer insists there will not be enough evidence to convict his client for the killing.
Police appear to have never provided an official reason for the chase in the first place, and the boy’s father, Christopher Few, was never charged in relation to any alleged wrongdoing that may have caused police to start the chase. CNN also reported that Few and one of the officers who killed his son had a previous relationship that investigators are proving.
While both marshals were indicted relatively quickly, the case, which involves white victims and non-white cops, illustrates the dangers of treating police violence as a problem purely or overwhelmingly about racial bias. Had Few not had his six-year-old in the car and the marshals managed to kill him, can there be much doubt that they would have fabricated a cause for the shooting if not for the entire interaction? Even with the six-year-old in the car, had police managed to kill the boy and the father, it’s unlikely the case would have went to trial, as police would have been free to fabricate a story.
The seemingly unchecked power police officers have to initiate interactions and to control the investigation in the aftermath of violence, along with a nearly total lack of accountability and transparency in many jurisdictions thanks to local laws, state laws, and often union contracts as well, means anyone can become a potential victim of police.
Prosecutors say the presence of body camera footage facilitated the indictment. Watch it below:
One of the most aggravating aspects of civil asset forfeiture for anyone trying to study the subtle beast is just how little information is public about how much property police departments seize, who they seize it from, and where all that revenue goes.
Enter the Chicago Reader, which in an investigation published Thursday painstakingly pieced together how the Chicago Police Department’s narcotics unit uses civil forfeiture to create “what amounts to a secret budget—an off-the-books stream of income used to supplement the bureau’s public budget.”
According to the Reader, the CPD has seized a whopping $72 million in cash and property since 2009 using civil forfeiture, and used some of that money—without any form of public oversight—to purchase controversial surveillance equipment like cell-phone tracking devices.
Among the people caught in the civil forfeiture dragnet was 72-year-old Willie Mae Swansey, whose PT Cruiser was seized by the CPD after her son was caught driving it with 50 to 100 grams of heroin on him.
The Reader has documented for the first time the full size and scope of CPD’s civil forfeiture program—how much money it brings in and how it spends its take. Through numerous Freedom of Information Act requests, the Reader, working with the Chicago-based transparency nonprofit Lucy Parsons Labs and the public records website MuckRock, obtained more than 1,000 pages of CPD documents—including the department’s deposit and expenditure ledgers, internal e-mails, and purchasing records—that offer an unprecedented look into how Chicago police and the Cook County state’s attorney’s office make lucrative use of civil asset forfeiture.
Since 2009, the year CPD began keeping electronic records of its forfeiture accounts, the department has brought in nearly $72 million in cash and assets through civil forfeiture, keeping nearly $47 million for itself and sending on almost $18 million to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and almost $7.2 million to the Illinois State Police, according to our analysis of CPD records […]
The Reader found that CPD uses civil forfeiture funds to finance many of the day-to-day operations of its narcotics unit and to secretly purchase controversial surveillance equipment without public scrutiny or City Council oversight. (The Cook County state’s attorney’s office, for its part, clearly indicates narcotics-related forfeiture income in its annual budget. According to its 2016 budget, the office will use this year’s expected forfeiture revenue of $4.96 million to pay the salaries and benefits of the 41 full-time employees of its forfeiture unit.)
As I reported earlier this summer, the state of Illinois seized $72 million over the past couple of years, according to state police documents obtained by the Illinois ACLU through public records requests:
The list is full of digital scales, money counters, safes and guns (including AR-style rifles and shotguns). Among the seized vehicles are no less than six Cadillac Escalades, six Mercedes-Benz sedans, and a 2013 Triumph Bonneville Steve McQueen Edition motorcycle.
Electronics are an especially popular target for seizures by law enforcement, and the Illinois police are no different: Flatscreen TVs, especially of the 50″ and above variety, were common items, along with smart phones, iPads, digital cameras, laptops and video game systems, and Beats by Dre.
But while the documents shed some rare light on asset forfeiture in the state, it didn’t tell us, for example, whether the seizures were under civil or criminal procedure, or under what law the assets were seized.
The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, gave the state’s asset forfeiture laws a “D-” grade for their lax property owner protections, low standards of evidence and expensive bond requirements to challenge seizures.
“Illinois’ reporting is better than some states in that they actually have reporting, but it’s far, far away from what we believe should be required,” Dick Carpenter, director for strategic research at the Institute for Justice, told me. “This is exactly the type of info we think should be reported to the public, but it’s very rare that any state collects this or makes it available.”
One of the most aggravating aspects of civil asset forfeiture for anyone trying to study the subtle beast is just how little information is public about how much property police departments seize, who they seize it from, and where all that revenue goes.
Enter the Chicago Reader, which in an investigation published Thursday painstakingly pieced together how the Chicago Police Department’s narcotics unit uses civil forfeiture to create “what amounts to a secret budget—an off-the-books stream of income used to supplement the bureau’s public budget.”
According to the Reader, the CPD has seized a whopping $72 million in cash and property since 2009 using civil forfeiture, and used some of that money—without any form of public oversight—to purchase controversial surveillance equipment like cell-phone tracking devices.
Among the people caught in the civil forfeiture dragnet was 72-year-old Willie Mae Swansey, whose PT Cruiser was seized by the CPD after her son was caught driving it with 50 to 100 grams of heroin on him.
The Reader has documented for the first time the full size and scope of CPD’s civil forfeiture program—how much money it brings in and how it spends its take. Through numerous Freedom of Information Act requests, the Reader, working with the Chicago-based transparency nonprofit Lucy Parsons Labs and the public records website MuckRock, obtained more than 1,000 pages of CPD documents—including the department’s deposit and expenditure ledgers, internal e-mails, and purchasing records—that offer an unprecedented look into how Chicago police and the Cook County state’s attorney’s office make lucrative use of civil asset forfeiture.
Since 2009, the year CPD began keeping electronic records of its forfeiture accounts, the department has brought in nearly $72 million in cash and assets through civil forfeiture, keeping nearly $47 million for itself and sending on almost $18 million to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and almost $7.2 million to the Illinois State Police, according to our analysis of CPD records […]
The Reader found that CPD uses civil forfeiture funds to finance many of the day-to-day operations of its narcotics unit and to secretly purchase controversial surveillance equipment without public scrutiny or City Council oversight. (The Cook County state’s attorney’s office, for its part, clearly indicates narcotics-related forfeiture income in its annual budget. According to its 2016 budget, the office will use this year’s expected forfeiture revenue of $4.96 million to pay the salaries and benefits of the 41 full-time employees of its forfeiture unit.)
As I reported earlier this summer, the state of Illinois seized $72 million over the past couple of years, according to state police documents obtained by the Illinois ACLU through public records requests:
The list is full of digital scales, money counters, safes and guns (including AR-style rifles and shotguns). Among the seized vehicles are no less than six Cadillac Escalades, six Mercedes-Benz sedans, and a 2013 Triumph Bonneville Steve McQueen Edition motorcycle.
Electronics are an especially popular target for seizures by law enforcement, and the Illinois police are no different: Flatscreen TVs, especially of the 50″ and above variety, were common items, along with smart phones, iPads, digital cameras, laptops and video game systems, and Beats by Dre.
But while the documents shed some rare light on asset forfeiture in the state, it didn’t tell us, for example, whether the seizures were under civil or criminal procedure, or under what law the assets were seized.
The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, gave the state’s asset forfeiture laws a “D-” grade for their lax property owner protections, low standards of evidence and expensive bond requirements to challenge seizures.
“Illinois’ reporting is better than some states in that they actually have reporting, but it’s far, far away from what we believe should be required,” Dick Carpenter, director for strategic research at the Institute for Justice, told me. “This is exactly the type of info we think should be reported to the public, but it’s very rare that any state collects this or makes it available.”
Armand Lauzon owns a software company, but on Monday he’ll have to stand before the Tennessee Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners to explain why he should be allowed to stay in business.
Lauzon doesn’t cut or color hair, doesn’t shape or polish nails and doesn’t apply makeup. He doesn’t perm, pluck, wax or weave. He doesn’t frost tips or French them.
Yet, unless the Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners—which, for better or worse, has regulatory power over anyone who wants to do engage in any of those activities for money—changes course, it could force Lauzon’s company out of businesses and make him pay a fine to the state.
Lauzon’s business is—to steal a hackneyed Silicon Valley expression—basically “Uber, but for cosmetologists.” He’s the founder and CEO of Project Belle, a website that allows licensed cosmetologists to schedule appointments with prospective clients. Instead of going to a salon, customers can have hairstylists or makeup artists come directly to their homes or businesses.
The idea came from his cousin, a professional cosmetologist and new mother who found it difficult to maintain full hours at a salon while also caring for her family. Seeing how sharing economy powerhouses like Airbnb and Uber were changing how people looked for lodging and transportation, Lauzon realized there was an opportunity for a similar service to do the same thing to the salon industry.
The convenience is an obvious selling point for customers, but Lauzon says the cosmologists using his service benefit too. They can set their own schedules, don’t have to pay fees to rent space in a salon or spa and determine their own pricing (Project Belle takes 15 percent off the top, similar to how Airbnb operates).
Project Belle launched in September 2015 and started booking customers in December. Just nine months later, the website lists more than 50 licensed cosmetologists in the Nashville area. More than 200 customers have booked over 500 appointments this year.
A review of Project Belle’s website “revealed that (Lauzon) is allowing licensed hair stylists, aestheticians and manicurists to do in-home work to the public in the State of Tennessee without possessing a valid cosmetology shop license,” wrote Laura Martin, assistant general counsel for the cosmetology board.
Lauzon’s attorney, Daniel Horwitz, says that the board’s entire claim that Project Belle requires a cosmetology license in order to conduct business in the state is based on the false assumption that the business is providing cosmetology services.
“It is not,” he wrote to the board in August. “Project Belle has never provided any cosmetology services to any customer in Nashville or anywhere else. It also has no plans to do so in the future.”
This isn’t just a semantic point.
The board’s decision to take action against Project Belle raises some interesting questions about the scope and authority of regulatory agencies like this one. If a state cosmetology board is able to regulate a business like Project Belle, is it also able to regulate any business that serves to connect professionals with customers? Could a similar board, if it wanted to, regulate how cosmetologists advertise their services in third party publications like the Yellow Pages or a newspaper?
Or, could it be that the board is using its regulatory power at the behest of private businesses who don’t want to compete with Project Belle?
That seems to be case. Attached to the cease-and-desist letter the board sent to Lauzon in July was a single complaint filed by Karen Kops. Kops is the co-owner of Poppy & Monroe, a businesses that sells organic skin care products in Nashville.
“I’m writing to advise you of a local company, www.projectbelle.com, offering and advertising for cosmetologically services on location which I believe is outside of current state law rules,” Kops wrote in an email dated February 22, 2016. “As a business owner with a brick and mortar shop adhering to all state law requirements, I find this type of competition highly disturbing.”
Those last eight words really caught Lauzon’s attention. He bristles at the notion that competition could be “disturbing” but he also takes the complaint as something of a badge of honor.
“I think we are disruptive, but that’s a good thing” he says, drawing a parallel between Project Belle’s business model and how other so-called “disruptors” like Uber and Airbnb have benefitted consumers by providing greater convenience and competition, while facing similar challenges from regulatory agencies trying to protect established businesses.
It’s unclear if the state board received other complaints about Project Belle. The one from Kops was the only complaint filed as part of the legal action taken by the board in July, and Horwitz says he’s never seen any other official complaints. A spokesman for the state board did not answer Reason’s inquiries about whether other complaints existed or why Kops’ email prompted the board’s investigation.
As such, it appears that the state board tried to force Lauzon out of business on the basis of a single complaint from a potential competitor.
“Economic protectionism, which is the motivation for the Board’s actions here, is never a legitimate state interest,” says Keith Diggs, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm that frequently challenges overreaching government regulations that limit economic freedom. Though IJ is not involved in the legal dispute between the state board and Project Belle, the organization says it is monitoring the situation.
Diggs says the board’s action against Lauzon are not just wrong, but probably unconstitutional. A 2002 decision in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a similar Tennessee law prohibiting selling caskets without a funeral director’s license. That licensing law was a “naked attempt to raise a fortress protecting the monopoly rents that funeral directors extract from consumers,” Judge Danny Boggs wrote in that case.
Even if the state board believes it has a legitimate reason to prevent Project Belle from competing with brick-and-mortal salons in Tennessee—and believes it has the authority to regulate a website—there’s still the question of whether it should.
On its website, the Tennessee State Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners says its primary objective is “the safety and welfare of the public.”
The cease-and-desist order does not explain how Project Belle jeopardizes the public’s safety or welfare.
Lauzon says Project Belle takes public welfare “very seriously.” All cosmetologists listed on Project Belle are licensed by the state and go through a vetting process before they can schedule appointments with clients. Applicants must provide a work history, proof of ID and show their state license; then must submit to an in-person interview with Project Belle staff before setting up a profile on the website. Once online, customers can give reviews and feedback—steering future users towards top notch professionals and away from anyone who isn’t doing a good job.
On Monday, Lauzon will climb the steps to the Davy Crockett Tower in downtown Nashville and make his case to the state board. He hopes to convince the bureaucrats that they don’t have a good reason, or good authority, to shut down Project Belle.
“We don’t want ancient laws being interpreted by a bureaucracy to stop us from bring services to those people,” he says.
Armand Lauzon owns a software company, but on Monday he’ll have to stand before the Tennessee Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners to explain why he should be allowed to stay in business.
Lauzon doesn’t cut or color hair, doesn’t shape or polish nails and doesn’t apply makeup. He doesn’t perm, pluck, wax or weave. He doesn’t frost tips or French them.
Yet, unless the Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners—which, for better or worse, has regulatory power over anyone who wants to do engage in any of those activities for money—changes course, it could force Lauzon’s company out of businesses and make him pay a fine to the state.
Lauzon’s business is—to steal a hackneyed Silicon Valley expression—basically “Uber, but for cosmetologists.” He’s the founder and CEO of Project Belle, a website that allows licensed cosmetologists to schedule appointments with prospective clients. Instead of going to a salon, customers can have hairstylists or makeup artists come directly to their homes or businesses.
The idea came from his cousin, a professional cosmetologist and new mother who found it difficult to maintain full hours at a salon while also caring for her family. Seeing how sharing economy powerhouses like Airbnb and Uber were changing how people looked for lodging and transportation, Lauzon realized there was an opportunity for a similar service to do the same thing to the salon industry.
The convenience is an obvious selling point for customers, but Lauzon says the cosmologists using his service benefit too. They can set their own schedules, don’t have to pay fees to rent space in a salon or spa and determine their own pricing (Project Belle takes 15 percent off the top, similar to how Airbnb operates).
Project Belle launched in September 2015 and started booking customers in December. Just nine months later, the website lists more than 50 licensed cosmetologists in the Nashville area. More than 200 customers have booked over 500 appointments this year.
A review of Project Belle’s website “revealed that (Lauzon) is allowing licensed hair stylists, aestheticians and manicurists to do in-home work to the public in the State of Tennessee without possessing a valid cosmetology shop license,” wrote Laura Martin, assistant general counsel for the cosmetology board.
Lauzon’s attorney, Daniel Horwitz, says that the board’s entire claim that Project Belle requires a cosmetology license in order to conduct business in the state is based on the false assumption that the business is providing cosmetology services.
“It is not,” he wrote to the board in August. “Project Belle has never provided any cosmetology services to any customer in Nashville or anywhere else. It also has no plans to do so in the future.”
This isn’t just a semantic point.
The board’s decision to take action against Project Belle raises some interesting questions about the scope and authority of regulatory agencies like this one. If a state cosmetology board is able to regulate a business like Project Belle, is it also able to regulate any business that serves to connect professionals with customers? Could a similar board, if it wanted to, regulate how cosmetologists advertise their services in third party publications like the Yellow Pages or a newspaper?
Or, could it be that the board is using its regulatory power at the behest of private businesses who don’t want to compete with Project Belle?
That seems to be case. Attached to the cease-and-desist letter the board sent to Lauzon in July was a single complaint filed by Karen Kops. Kops is the co-owner of Poppy & Monroe, a businesses that sells organic skin care products in Nashville.
“I’m writing to advise you of a local company, www.projectbelle.com, offering and advertising for cosmetologically services on location which I believe is outside of current state law rules,” Kops wrote in an email dated February 22, 2016. “As a business owner with a brick and mortar shop adhering to all state law requirements, I find this type of competition highly disturbing.”
Those last eight words really caught Lauzon’s attention. He bristles at the notion that competition could be “disturbing” but he also takes the complaint as something of a badge of honor.
“I think we are disruptive, but that’s a good thing” he says, drawing a parallel between Project Belle’s business model and how other so-called “disruptors” like Uber and Airbnb have benefitted consumers by providing greater convenience and competition, while facing similar challenges from regulatory agencies trying to protect established businesses.
It’s unclear if the state board received other complaints about Project Belle. The one from Kops was the only complaint filed as part of the legal action taken by the board in July, and Horwitz says he’s never seen any other official complaints. A spokesman for the state board did not answer Reason’s inquiries about whether other complaints existed or why Kops’ email prompted the board’s investigation.
As such, it appears that the state board tried to force Lauzon out of business on the basis of a single complaint from a potential competitor.
“Economic protectionism, which is the motivation for the Board’s actions here, is never a legitimate state interest,” says Keith Diggs, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm that frequently challenges overreaching government regulations that limit economic freedom. Though IJ is not involved in the legal dispute between the state board and Project Belle, the organization says it is monitoring the situation.
Diggs says the board’s action against Lauzon are not just wrong, but probably unconstitutional. A 2002 decision in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a similar Tennessee law prohibiting selling caskets without a funeral director’s license. That licensing law was a “naked attempt to raise a fortress protecting the monopoly rents that funeral directors extract from consumers,” Judge Danny Boggs wrote in that case.
Even if the state board believes it has a legitimate reason to prevent Project Belle from competing with brick-and-mortal salons in Tennessee—and believes it has the authority to regulate a website—there’s still the question of whether it should.
On its website, the Tennessee State Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners says its primary objective is “the safety and welfare of the public.”
The cease-and-desist order does not explain how Project Belle jeopardizes the public’s safety or welfare.
Lauzon says Project Belle takes public welfare “very seriously.” All cosmetologists listed on Project Belle are licensed by the state and go through a vetting process before they can schedule appointments with clients. Applicants must provide a work history, proof of ID and show their state license; then must submit to an in-person interview with Project Belle staff before setting up a profile on the website. Once online, customers can give reviews and feedback—steering future users towards top notch professionals and away from anyone who isn’t doing a good job.
On Monday, Lauzon will climb the steps to the Davy Crockett Tower in downtown Nashville and make his case to the state board. He hopes to convince the bureaucrats that they don’t have a good reason, or good authority, to shut down Project Belle.
“We don’t want ancient laws being interpreted by a bureaucracy to stop us from bring services to those people,” he says.