The Government Must Regulate The Shampooing And Blow Drying Of Your Hair!
One of the more intense legislative debates in the waning days of the 2024 Legislative session was over SB 354. This simple bill eliminates the occupational licensing requirement for folks who shampoo or blow dry someone’s hair in a barber shop or beauty salon, as long as that’s all they do. That’s it. That’s all the bill does.
Democrats took to the Well of the House to testify against SB 354, claiming all sorts of diseases and other horrible things would be visited upon the citizens of Georgia should this bill become law.
Proving that the political spectrum is really a circle and not a straight line, now some Republicans are calling on Governor Kemp to veto SB 354. I recently received this chilling call to action from the Coweta Republican Party:
Aside from being deceptively worded, the statement misses the point. SB 354 doesn’t remove the “existing verification of lawful immigration presence built into the occupational licensing process” for folks who shampoo and blow dry your hair, it removes the need for those folks to get an occupational license altogether!
Silly me, I thought Republicans were against overbearing government regulation.
Suppose, by some miracle, you don’t get a horrific disease from these unlicensed shampooers and blow dryers. You still face the mortal danger of being served by someone who snuck into this country illegally and is illegally employed by a heavily regulated place of business such as a barbershop or hair salon! Oh, the humanity!
Look folks, there are numerous laws already on the books that require businesses to verify the legal status of the people they hire. The IRS is constantly on the lookout for businesses that ignore the law and fail to pay their employment taxes, or have employees with fake social security numbers. Those laws don’t go away if the occupational licensing requirement goes away. Additionally, there are plenty of regulations in place to keep barbershops and hair salons clean and disease-free. Finally, there is this wonderful thing called the free market, which allows a person to choose which barbershop or hair salon they do business with. If you discover that a place of business is unsafe or doing illegal things, as a free American, you can take your business elsewhere.
Governor Kemp should ignore this strange union of the Left and Far-Right, and sign SB 354. It will open up opportunities for folks to apprentice at a barbershop or hair salon. It will give young people a chance to see if those honorable professions are the right place for them to live out their hopes and dreams. And the doomsayers who wring their hands over all sorts of potential horrors will be proved wrong once again.
