America the Messy Yard Police State

Goldwater Institute fights tyrants on Arizona Board of Cosmetology

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Board out of woman’s business

By Robert Anglen The Republic | azcentral.com Sat May 18, 2013 1:08 PM

Confined to her Kansas City, Mo., home for six months with breast cancer in 2006, Lauren Boice conceived of a business linking cosmetologists with hospice patients.

She said the idea was to provide a beauty and care service for elderly and ill people who couldn’t get in a car for a trip to a salon.

In 2008, Boice brought Angels on Earth Home Beauty LLC to Green Valley. Two years later, she was locked in a legal battle with the Arizona Board of Cosmetology over a host of regulations that threatened to shut her down.

The board sent investigators to Boice’s house and accused her of operating an illegal salon. They told her she failed to comply with salon licensing requirements and told her she needed to install equipment such as a sink or lease space in a functioning salon.

No matter that Boice’s business operated as a dispatch service and the only equipment required to run it was a phone and a computer. Boice hired licensed cosmetologists and arranged for them to visit hospitals, care homes and private residences. The board insisted Boice was breaking the law.

“Every time I complied with one regulation, they say, ‘Now you have to do this... .’ It finally got to the point where I said, ‘This is just ridiculous,’ ” Boice said. “What snapped me was when the board said I had to book appointments through a (physical) salon. That would have removed me from my own business.”

Officials with the Cosmetology Board did not respond to interview requests Friday. Board members, who are appointed by the governor, regulate hair styling, manicures, massage and other spa-type treatments.

“It was clear they (the board) had no idea what I was doing. They were trying to pigeonhole me,” Boice said. “I wrote to the governor and the attorney general, saying, ‘Please help me.’ ”

Boice, 54, previously worked in a hospice. She now has a full-time marketing job and operates Angels in her spare time. She said the business doesn’t generate much profit, if any. She said it is more of a community service that gives those who are homebound a chance to look and feel better.

“It gives people a sense of well-being,” she said of the patients her technicians treat. “I’m not a technician. I’m not a salon owner.”

Boice said the board initiated its crackdown based on the complaint of a disgruntled job applicant whom she refused to hire.

Boice said the state was wrong, and she was determined to fight. When government officials failed to respond, she turned to lawyers with the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix.

The non-profit think tank challenges government and often takes up causes on behalf of small-business owners. Lawyers there described Boice’s case as a civil-liberties issue.

“The Board of Cosmetology has made a cottage industry of depriving consumers of choice,” said Clint Bolick, Goldwater’s vice president for litigation. “(Arizona’s board) may be the worst I’ve encountered. The board tends to take very draconian positions.”

Goldwater sued the board over a 2009 decision prohibiting a Gilbert salon owner from using live fish in a pedicure process. The fish eat dead skin off customers’ feet.

Board President Donna Aune said that the fish posed a potential danger to customers and could expose customers to bacteria and disease.

Goldwater Institute lawyers called the board’s decision arbitrary and without proof. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge in March sided with the board and ordered the owner to stop offering the treatment.

Bolick said Friday that Goldwater plans to appeal.

In 2011, Goldwater sued the board on Boice’s behalf, beginning a 16-month-long battle that ended last month when the board agreed to settle the case.

Bolick called it a capitulation. He said the board agreed it did not have jurisdiction in the case and that Boice is running a dispatch service, not a salon. He said the board put Boice through a 16-month ordeal only to determine it did not have the right to regulate her.

As part of the settlement, the board agreed that it would cease any attempts to regulate Boice’s business and agreed not to impose requirements on similar businesses, Bolick said.

He said the case cost Arizona taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps more. Goldwater waived its attorneys’ fees as part of the settlement.

“It was very, very frustrating,” Bolick said. “Litigating against the Board of Cosmetology is like banging your head against a wall.”

Boice said she was thrilled by the victory and praised Goldwater for taking the case. She said the board overreached and the state did nothing to stop it. “They just wanted to push me and push me,” Boice said. “When they realized that I wouldn’t back down, they backed down.”

Boice, whose cancer returned in October, is once again going through treatment. She said the real victory is for her customers.

“The idea was born out of my work with hospices,” she said. “It is a labor of love.”

Reach the reporter at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com.

 
 

America the Messy Yard Police State