It’s Just a Box—So Why Is It Illegal to Sell?

Описание: Married couple Candi Mentink and Todd Collard run Caskets of Honor, a small, family-owned casket company. Candi and Todd sell affordable caskets wrapped in vinyl graphic designs honoring the deceased person’s life. Candi and Todd sell the same caskets that funeral homes do—and even with their personalized designs, Candi and Todd strive to avoid the huge markups that funeral homes regularly charge for caskets. Customers all over the country choose Caskets of Honor for their loved ones because of the affordability and personal touch. And from their Calvin, Oklahoma workshop, Candi and Todd can prepare and ship caskets to customers in almost every state.

https://ij.org/case/oklahoma-caskets-ii/

But not Oklahoma. Candi and Todd found out the hard way that their business made them criminals. Under Oklahoma law, it’s a crime for anyone but a state-licensed funeral director to sell caskets to the public. To become licensed funeral directors, Candi and Todd would have to spend two years in a mortuary science program (training in skills wholly unnecessary to selling a casket), complete a one-year apprenticeship under a funeral director, pass two exams on funeral directing, and pay thousands of dollars. And it doesn’t stop there. They would also have to convert their workshop in Calvin into a full-service funeral home—spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build an embalming room, create a viewing area for human remains, and purchase a fleet of vehicles to transport human remains. None of these additions would be of any use to them.

All of that to sell a box. But caskets serve no public health or safety purpose. Oklahoma doesn’t regulate casket design or the casket manufacturing process. It doesn’t even require a casket for burial. An Oklahoman can be buried in a cardboard box, a shroud, or nothing at all.

By banning Candi and Todd from selling caskets in the state, Oklahoma is doing only one thing: protecting state-licensed funeral directors from competition. That is an unconstitutional abuse of power. Licensing exists to protect the public—not to stifle honest competition. Oklahoma cannot prevent entrepreneurs like Candi and Todd from earning an honest living solely to protect the financial interests of the funeral industry. Almost every court across the country that has examined licensing restrictions on casket sales has struck them down as unconstitutional.

That’s why Candi and Todd teamed up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to file a lawsuit under the Oklahoma Constitution against Oklahoma’s licensing requirements for casket sales.