Arkansas looking at license to braid
Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007
Some people could view as “ridiculous” the state’s requirement for hair braiders to get a cosmetology license in order to serve customers, a state senator acknowledges.
But Sen. Steve Faris, D-Central, said there must be a good, legitimate reason for licensing braiders. He mentioned stopping the transmittal of head lice from one customer to another as a possibility.
Braiding involves the intricate twisting, weaving, extending or locking into dreadlocks of natural hair, and it’s a natural alternative to the damaging chemicals that many blacks use to straighten their hair, said Valerie Bayham, an attorney for the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm.
The institute has successfully challenged a hair-braiding licensing law in California, she said.
A separate group, the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation, questioned the necessity for licensing braiders in a report that argued that states license too many occupations and undermine competition “under the guise of ‘helping’ consumers. ’” Both the foundation and institute describe themselves as libertarian.
Last year, a Little Rock woman told the Arkansas Board of Cosmetology she was surprised to learn that she needed a cosmetology license to braid hair at a salon. The board fined her $ 100 for braiding without a license.
Korto Briggs said she had been told she wouldn’t need a license as long as she was not using chemicals and was separated from other hair stylists.
“I really did believe that once I was separated from the other stylists who were working with chemicals that I could braid, being that the only thing that I would need to braid hair naturally is my fingers and a tall comb,” she said.
Briggs, a fashion designer, told the board she’s originally from Africa and braiding is part of African-American culture.
It’s unfair to require her to attend cosmetology school to get a license because she won’t learn anything there about braiding, she said.
“It’s hard to put ‘How to do a corn row’ into [the ] form of words and put it into a textbook,” Briggs told the board, according to its minutes. “And because of this, that’s why I haven’t gone to school and [got ] a license.” She said some states — Florida, New York, and Tennessee, for example — have developed separate licensing programs for braiders.
“There are many braiders, like myself, [in Arkansas ] that are being robbed of setting up businesses and working unless we go to school to do what other cosmetologists do, even though we’re not going to use any of that information, even though we’re not going to learn anything new about our craft,” Briggs said.
She wouldn’t object if the board set up a program under which braiders learn “the proper methods of sanitation and just looking at the client’s hair and inspecting, washing, all that stuff,” she said.
Board members told Briggs the board licenses people who work on other people’s hair because they are responsible to the public. The board wants cosmetology school graduates to be well-rounded in things beyond braiding, the board said.
Board member Jane Powell of Little Rock said the board considered a separate licensing program for braiders and exempting them from the licensure requirement but decided not to propose these options to the 2007 General Assembly.
There are health and safety reasons for requiring braiders to have a license, she said. The curriculum for cosmetologists is designed to give them an understanding of health and safety issues, she said.
Braiding always has been part of the curriculum, said Powell, owner of Bee Jay’s Hairstyling Academy in Little Rock.
Arkansas has about 29, 000 cosmetologists, said Kathy Wittum, director of the board. She didn’t know how many are braiders.
Braiders are required to get a license under Arkansas Code Annotated 17-26-102 (b ) based on legal advice that the board obtained from legal counsel, she said.
According to the Institute for Justice, Arkansas is one of 22 states in which the law “remains silent on the issue of hair braiding,” leaving licensure up to cosmetology boards or investigators.
Arkansas’ braiders are required to pass an exam and complete 1, 500 hours of training to get a license, the institute said.
Ten states exempt braiders from cosmetology licensing and require them to either comply with regulations governing other businesses or with basic sanitation guidelines, the institute reported.
Eleven states have imposed some form of specialized license for them, and seven others require braiders to obtain a cosmetology or similar license requiring 1, 000 to 2, 100 hours of instruction, according to the institute.
It said there are different requirements for braiders in Arkansas’ neighboring states: Louisiana. A specialized alternative hair design license requires braiders to take a 1, 000-hour course and pass an exam. Mississippi. Braiders are required to pay $ 25 to register with the Mississippi Department of Health, complete the “self-test” part of a brochure on infection control techniques and keep the brochure available at the workplace. Missouri. To be licensed, braiders must pass an exam and either a 1, 500-hour course, 1, 220 hours of vocational instruction or 3, 000 hours of apprenticeship.
Oklahoma: A specialty hairbraiding technician license requires passing an exam and completing either a 600-hour course or a 1, 200-hour apprenticeship under a licensed instructor.
Tennessee. A specialty natural hair styling license may be obtained by passing a test and completing a 300-hour course.
Texas. The Department of Licensing and Regulation offers a specialty certificate in braiding to Texas braiders as long as they don’t shampoo, condition or dry hair or use glue when they add extensions. To obtain the certificate, braiders must complete a 35-hour course.
Bayham of the Institute for Justice said hair braiding is “a great start-up entreprenurial option for those with limited resources. Hair braiding, like so many other occupations, provides outstanding opportunities for economic self-sufficiency so long as governments don’t impose arbitrary barriers to entry.” But Bayham said a cosmetology license requires thousands of hours of classroom training at a cost of roughly $ 10, 000 to $ 15, 000 in many states and training is often unrelated to African hair braiding.
State Rep. Dawn Creekmore, who is a licensed cosmetologist and cosmetology instructor, said it costs anywhere from $ 6, 000 to $ 12, 000 in the Little Rock area to complete 1, 500 hours of instruction at a cosmetology school, in addition to passing an exam, to obtain a cosmetology license.
She said manicurists are required to get 600 hours of instruction, in addition to passing an exam, in order to obtain a license through the Board of Cosmetology. She believes a similar program could be established for hair braiders.
Hair braiders need to be licensed to learn about things such as how hair grows and how hair can be damaged and sanitation measures, said Creekmore, a Democrat from Hensley.
“We can’t just assume that people know how to sanitize. When you are working with the general public, they need to be accountable,” she said.
Powell said she’s not opposed the idea of creating a separate braiding license with a 600-hour instructional program. “I am sure if the board was requested to look at that, they would.”
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