Texas lost another round in its contining attempts to maintain protectionist monopolies in certain trades. The Fifth Circuit ruled that unlicensed interior designers are indeed interior designers.
Texas maintains protectionist, anti-competition statutes for, among other things, hairdressers, polygraph examiners, funeral directors, land surveyors, private security companies, social workers, pest controllers, irrigators, family therapists, dieticians, barbers, audiologists, acupuncturists, hearing-aid dispensers, and court reporters. This is not the first time the Fifth Circuit has intervened. In 2003, it ruled that Texas had to allow its residents to buy wine over the Internet, after liquor wholesalers had gotten the Legislature to make importation a felony. As I wrote here in 2005,
Texas state government is designed to prevent competition, not to encourage it. One way is by restricting information. In 2001, for example, the Sunset Commission chastised the Funeral Services Commission for not posting sample prices for funerals on its web site. Four years later, the information is still not there.
I just checked. It still isn’t.
