Minerva Dairy is an Ohio-based dairy that has sold its delicious artisanal butter to satisfied consumers in all 50 states. Recently, however, Wisconsin began enforcing a law designed to insulate in-state butter makers from competition. The law prevents out-of-state butter makers from selling their butter in Wisconsin, unless they go through the cos ...
When Arty Vogt purchased a moving business with his wife Stephanie, he never thought that running it would be easy. But he certainly didn’t think that he’d be shut down simply because the existing businesses didn’t want to compete with him. Unfortunately, Arty operated in West Virginia, which required movers to obtain a “C ...
Today we filed this comment letter with the FTC describing how easing occupational licensing would give Americans a pathway to prosperity. The FTC has assembled an Economic Liberty Taskforce dedicated to addressing occupational licensing abuses, and is holding a roundtable today about how licensing affects people’s ability to move across ...
Earlier this week Connecticut removed occupational licensing, registration, and certificate requirements for several professions. The de-licensing of an occupation is especially notable because of its rarity. A 2015 study authored by Dr. Robert J. Thornton and Dr. Edward J. Timmons, and published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, found tha ...
We received an adverse ruling in our lawsuit on behalf of David Hansen, which challenged a ruling by the Oregon Board of Architects that David practiced unlicensed architecture when he created marketing drawings. These drawings were not blueprints or plans; they were meant to help a property development company attract retailers to potential deve ...
Usually a medical practice that provides innovative, cost-effective, and relatively less invasive care for patients would be seen as a benefit to the community it serves. But that is not the case in Georgia, where Women’s Surgical Center, LLC, has had to fight the state’s anti-competitive Certificate of Need (“CON”) laws in ...
It’s a good day for economic liberty. Governor Justice has signed SB 174—or as Arty Vogt calls it, “Stephanie’s law,”—which repeals West Virginia’s Competitor’s Veto statute. PLF represented Arty in a lawsuit challenging West Virginia’s licensing scheme for movers, which allowed existing busin ...
As pointed out by Eugene Volokh, the South Carolina Supreme Court recently considered a case in which the S.C. Department of Revenue defended a law on the sole basis of protecting one industry group (operators of small liquor stores) from competing with larger operations like Total Wine & More. The controversy arose because South Carolina law ...
This morning the West Virginia legislature passed a bill repealing their Certificate of Need law, also known as a “Competitor’s Veto” law. Formerly, anybody who wanted to start a moving business there essentially had to ask their competitors for permission first. When a budding entrepreneur applied for authority to operate a m ...