Don’t Thread on Me
The Texas Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Patel v. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (link no longer available), striking down a state law requiring at least 750 hours of training in order to perform commercial “eyebrow threading”—a form of hair removal mainly performed in South Asian and Middle Eastern communities—has generated substantial notoriety for the court and for the Institute for Justice, which brought the lawsuit challenging the law.
Patel drew notice from libertarian legal scholars for “reinvigorating ‘substantive due process,’” and “rejecting the Lochner bogeyman.” Reason’s Damon Root called Justice Don Willett’s concurring opinion “the most libertarian legal opinion ever written.” And University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds, proprietor of the Instapundit website, lauded the Institute for Justice in USA Today for its work challenging excessive occupational licensing regulations.
My present inquiry is simply whether the various opinions in Patel are sound from a doctrinal or “originalist” perspective—did the court correctly apply the relevant law?
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