Earlier this year, the federal appeals court in New Orleans “upheld a lower court decision that ruled the city of McKinney, Texas, must pay compensation to an innocent woman after a SWAT team destroyed her home in July 2020. The ruling comes a mere two months after Vicki Baker’s attorneys from the Institute for Justice (IJ) argued this case before the 5th Circuit.”
That innocent woman got $60,000 in compensation under the Texas state constitution. She got nothing under the federal constitution, which is less protective of people whose property is damaged by the government.
“This opinion is a strong rebuke of the city’s argument that it can avoid paying innocent people when law enforcement destroys their property,” notes Jeffrey Redfern of the Institute for Justice. “The Texas Constitution makes it clear that if the government damages private property for a public good, such as getting a fugitive off the streets, the government must bear that cost, not the unlucky property owner.”
As Dan King notes, “The raid occurred in July 2020, when McKinney Police were pursuing a fugitive who had kidnapped a girl, broken into Vicki’s home while she was not there, and barricaded himself inside. When the SWAT team arrived on the scene, they ran over Vicki’s fence with an armored vehicle, launched tear gas grenades through the windows, and blasted down the doors.”
Vicki Baker said, “This has been a long and hard process, so I’m thrilled that the appeals court sided with me and that I’m one step closer to putting this whole legal fight behind me. I understand that the police had to get this guy off the streets but the fact that the city refused to pay for the damage was not fair. I hope this sends a message to all cities in Texas that innocent people should not be forced to pay when this sort of thing happens.”
The Institute for Justice filed a lawsuit on Baker’s behalf 5 years ago, alleging violations of both the federal constitution and the Texas state constitution. Four years ago, a jury in a federal court ruled that Vicki was entitled to around $60,000 under the federal constitution. That ruling was reversed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, whose headquarters is in New Orleans. But after reversing the verdict, the appeals court let her seek compensation instead under the Texas state constitution, noting that it was not ruling on whether Baker was entitled to damages under the state constitution.
In June 2025, the federal trial court in the Eastern District of Texas ruled Baker was entitled to $60,000 plus interest under the Texas state constitution. This year, the federal appeals court upheld that ruling in favor of Baker.
In addition to vindicating people’s constitutional rights, the Institute for Justice also works to eliminate unnecessary regulations that shrink the economy and increase joblessness. For example, it fights against unnecessary and overly burdensome licensing requirements. As the Institute for Justices notes, studies find that most licensing requirements increase costs to consumers while not improving the quality of services. And there are licensing boards that behave like rackets focused on stifling competition rather than protecting consumers.
Back in the 1950s, most states didn’t require hairstylists or hair braiders to get a license before they could cut people’s hair. Just 4 percent of Americans needed a license to work in 1950. Now, 30 percent of Americans need a occupational license to work. Three states mandate useless “inclusivity” training for cosmetologists, making it more costly to be a cosmetologist while teaching them useless DEI buzzwords.
The harm from excessive occupational licensing regulations is so obvious that it has been noted by the administrations of Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, all of which recognized the need to cut back on occupational-licensing restrictions. “During the Obama administration, the Department of Labor and the White House Council of Economic Advisers published a lengthy report on licensing laws, and called for states to take action to remove unnecessary barriers to work. ‘Licensing restrictions cost millions of jobs nationwide and raise consumer expenses by over one hundred billion dollars,’ it concluded.”
The Trump administration also recognized the harm of occupational licensing, saying that “the cost and complexity of licensing creates an economic barrier for Americans seeking a job” and “a barrier for Americans that move from state to state.”
Kamala Harris also called for cutting back on occupational-licensing regulations in her 2024 presidential campaign.
Matt Yglesias describes how “beauty schools are ripping off their students. Terrible licensing rules deserve some of the blame.” He cites a New York Times article “about beauty schools that leave their students drowning in debt rather than opening up” job opportunities, thanks to “occupational licensing” rules.
To cut hair in New York state, you need to graduate from barber school. The number of hours of barber schooling you need is “determined by the approved NYS barber schools.” . . if you’ve been cutting hair in New Jersey and want to move your practice to the other side of the Hudson, that license is no good. Do New Yorkers whose kids go off to college in other states warn them about the dangers of Connecticut or California or Massachusetts barbers? Not in my experience, but the state of the New York takes the official view that the regulatory requirements in 46 states (and the District of Columbia) are not up to snuff.
As Yglesias points out, mandatory-school-attendance requirements for barbers and hair-stylists make no sense. Indeed, such attendance requirements make no sense even for occupations where public safety is at issue and some form of licensing may thus be justified (comically, defenders of beauty-school attendance mandates depict hair-styling as being a dangerous occupation where licensing is needed due to the presence of chemicals in hair treatments). As he notes, it makes more sense to require competency to be shown
purely through certification. In other words: You need to be able to pass the test. In that world, a beauty school can stay in business if and only if it offers a cost-effective training regime. Beauty schools would need to compete with efforts at self-instruction or with apprenticeship arrangements of various kinds. Instead, by requiring the 1,000 hours of training, the state licensing board creates a cozy business for the beauty schools. They become for-profit gatekeepers to economic opportunity. And their incentive structure isn’t to focus on effective education—the quality of the teaching is irrelevant to the business model. It’s to focus on maximizing the amount of money extracted from the students.
Many occupations that are now licensed do not need to be licensed to protect anyone. And the few that do, tend to have excessive requirements for getting a license, he noted:
“Licensing is a barrier to entry for all Americans looking for work in certain professions, but it’s particularly pernicious for those on the lower end of the economic ladder. For example, getting a license to cut hair can require more than a year of expensive schooling in some states, while becoming an interior designer in places like Florida requires more than 2,000 days (yes, days!) of training. There’s little evidence that licensing those professions does much of anything to protect public health and safety.
“Once you have a license, you might be stuck in the state where you earned it. A 2015 study by the Brookings Institution found that licensed workers were less likely to migrate between states, but not necessarily because people are happy in those places. Instead, researchers say workers feel locked in place because most state-issued professional licenses are not transferable, so moving out-of-state means you’d be out of business unless you can obtain a new license in your new home.”
Florida recently repealed its licensing requirement for interior designers, which used to require more than 2,000 days of training.
