Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 28, 1993 TAG: 9306280045
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATTHEW SCHOFIELD KANSAS CITY STAR
DATELINE: WICHITA, KAN. LENGTH: Medium
She had all the usual goods on her. A curling iron. Some rubber bands. A plastic bag of fake hair. She realized it was foolish, but the 15-year-old high school junior had even kept the regional and national awards she'd won for entrepreneurship.
And then she was turned in. The letter from the state Board of Cosmetology told her she could face 90 days in jail. What's more, the governor, the attorney general, the Sedgwick County district attorney, her principal and her teacher also had been notified.
"I didn't want to go to jail," she said. "I mean, my friends still ask me to help them out, but I don't because I know I'd get in trouble.
"I've stopped braiding hair."
Monique, as part of a school-related program this year, designed an award-winning business and made a couple hundred dollars practicing hair braiding in her bedroom and bathroom. She is spending this summer working at her father's north Wichita pawn shop.
Her story, however, does not necessarily stop there.
Some predict that her right to braid the hair of her friends and to charge $15 or so could become a national civil rights conflict.
"Who would have ever thought at the beginning a kid trying to learn about business could cause all this trouble?" said Mike Sanders, Monique's stepfather. "Nobody would have believed it could get so out of hand."
In one corner of the Great Wichita Hair Debate is a nationally prominent civil rights agency, the director of an entrepreneurial high school program and one of the world's richest men. They say that the state of Kansas is using unconstitutional and unconscionable laws to crack down on a teen-ager's dreams.
"It's very upsetting," said Charles G. Koch, the Wichita billionaire who controls energy giant Koch Industries. "It's outrageous. It's an ideological battle. These types of government intrusions are one of the prime problems with the economy - and the prime victims too often are the poor and the disadvantaged."
In the other corner is the state Board of Cosmetology, several beauty school operators and a host of angry hairdressers. They say Monique illegally worked as a cosmetologist from her home, skirting requirements, endangering public health and damaging the reputation of their profession.
"Everyone has missed the point here," said Fredrick Laurino, owner of Vernon's Kansas School of Cosmetology. "This is an issue of morals. I feel sorry for the young lady. But I feel sorrier that a young lady in an entrepreneur program at school has been taught to break the law."
And Nancy Shobe, executive director of the cosmetology board, says the issue is as simple as reading a state statute. Kansas law since 1927 has defined cosmetology as working with hair for a profit. Shobe says it requires a license, and a license requires formal training, such as a degree from a cosmetology school. She dismisses the notion that the requirements are too intrusive by noting that Kansas has 25,000 licensed cosmetologists.
"The law is set up to protect the public health," she said. "When we're enforcing it, we're the bad guys. But let some problems crop up, and people are going to want to know why we haven't been enforcing the law. Remember, this is a little girl who probably doesn't even know what . . . lice or a nit or T.B. looks like."
"We spend a whole week on sanitation," said Teresa Holmes, a teacher at a Wichita hair-design school. "And all of our students have to pay to go to school. It's not fair if she can do it out of her home."
Although complaints of fairness can come from both sides, a Washington libertarian civil rights group is considering taking up the case, said Clint Bolick, litigation director of the Institute for Justice.
"That the full weight of a state agency could fall on a 15-year-old who makes maybe $100 a month with her hobby in her house is fairly Orwellian," he said.
Bolick, who's fought the cosmetology industry before, says the case is the equivalent of restaurant boards cracking down on kiddie lemonade stands and could be symbolic of greater problems in this society.
"Cosmetology regulations, which generally go beyond health and safety concerns, could just be the tip of the occupational-licensing iceberg," he said.
by CNB