After my original post on this story, it looked like the good guys had won a victory for free market entrepreneurship. But the progressive regulation pushers just wouldn’t go away – mad or otherwise. Over the last two years the case of the monks of St. Joseph Abbey and their hand-crafted caskets wound its way all the way to the Supreme Court.
As World Magazine reported earlier this year, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the abbey back in March; Why pay more for a coffin?
Attorney Jeff Rowes of the Institute for Justice said the ruling was big: “This is one of only a handful of decisions since the New Deal in which a federal court of appeals has struck down economic regulations as unconstitutional.”
The Louisiana State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors still wouldn’t drop the issue, trying at last to get the Supremes to take a look. Well, thank the Lord, the court declined ~
The U.S. Supreme Court let stand an appeals court ruling that St. Joseph Abbey can sell simple cypress caskets without setting up a funeral parlor with embalming equipment, and without enrolling monks in courses on how to be funeral directors.
Hallelujah! In what’s becoming a rare occurrence in these days of activist courts, sanity actually prevailed.
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Originally posted Oct. 25, 2011:
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While attempting to organize my hard-copy archives this past weekend, I ran across a Big Government article that I’d saved from August 2010: Licensing Gone Wild: Monks Face Jail for Selling Caskets. Good grief!
I didn’t remember seeing a follow-up story, but was really curious about the outcome. Did a quick search and found that – Laus Deo…the monks won. A victory for economic liberty!
Saint Joseph Monastery, established over 100 years ago in southern Louisiana, had been making caskets for the members of their own community for decades.
For several centuries, monks have supported themselves financially by excelling at common trades such as farming and brewing beer. The monks at Saint Joseph Abbey have been able to preserve and maintain their quiet lifestyle through farming and harvesting timber.
Four years ago, in keeping with their founding philosophy of simple, self-supporting living, they started a new small business, “Saint Joseph Woodworks”, and began producing a line of cypress caskets for sale to the public.
Enter oppressive government overreach – in the form of the state Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors. They sent a cease-and-desist letter threatening the monastery with a lawsuit, fines, and even prison time. Seems a state regulation prevents anyone but a licensed funeral director from engaging in the retail sales of caskets in Louisiana.
The monks were in no position to set up shop as a fully-licensed funeral home, either fiscally or philosophically. But neither were they intimidated by the state’s funeral cartel.
The sole purpose of the law seemed to be economic protection of the funeral industry. So, aided by the Institute for Justice, the monastery filed a federal lawsuit against the restrictive legislation – and prevailed:
In July;
The court ruled that the Constitution does not allow the government to restrict the right to earn an honest living just to enrich government-licensed funeral directors. This is a victory not only for the monks, but for entrepreneurs nationwide, all of whom benefit from IJ’s strategic mission to guarantee economic liberty as an enforceable constitutional right.
More details are available HERE, HERE and HERE.
“We are absolutely thrilled that the court protected our economic liberty rights to provide caskets to willing consumers,” said Abbot Justin Brown. “This is a great day for the Abbey, the U.S. Constitution, and all Louisianians.”
Saint Joseph’s is now venturing into the artisan soap business. You can help them come up with a name for their new “monk soap” HERE. (Soul Suds? Purely Clean? Heavenly Lather? 
)
Let’s pray that they don’t get sued by the State Board of Detergent & Cleansing Manufacturers.
