Eyebrow-raising regulations: Iowa imposes extreme licensing requirement on eyebrow threaders

Iowa is once again a legal battleground over insidious occupational licensing laws that deprive people of their right to earn a living.

To legally practice eyebrow threading in Iowa, workers have to pass a test and undergo 600 hours of training that costs thousands of dollars. Neither the training nor the test have anything to do with brow threading, which involves plucking hairs without any chemicals or dangerous tools.

For comparison, only 15 hours of instruction are required for school bus drivers and 110 for emergency medical technicians. Even a new police officer in Iowa only undergoes 628 hours of training, barely more than an esthetician working as an eyebrow threader.

Those nonsensical standards are the subject of a lawsuit filed this week in Polk County. The owner of Perfect Brow Bar in West Des Moines is asking the court to block the state Board of Cosmetology from enforcing existing licensing regulations against eyebrow threaders. The business is represented by Alan Ostergren of the public interest law firm Kirkwood Institute.

Braiders and threaders often are women and come from immigrant families, so undue restrictions take away opportunities for Iowans who already have less economic mobility.

Brow threaders in Iowa are required to be licensed estheticians. Some professionals in that field use lasers and harsh chemicals that might justify stringent health and safety regulations, but eyebrow threaders only use a simple piece of cotton thread. Threaders say those many hours of instructional requirements are “useless” to their trade.

“The students must simply pay for and complete a course of instruction that has no relevance to their desired occupation,” the lawsuit claims. “ … The State of Iowa’s licensing scheme for threaders has no logical relationship to how threading is learned or practiced.”

Extreme licensing rules are exacerbating Iowa’s workforce shortage. Perfect Brow Bar has struggled to find qualified workers and the Board of Cosmetology is threatening administrative action for not employing the board’s own licensees, who may not know how to thread eyebrows anyway since their government-mandated training doesn’t include it.

The newly filed threading case has similarities to a 2015 lawsuit in Iowa over African-style hair braiding. A pair of Des Moines braiders challenged the state requirement that they be licensed cosmetologists, necessitating a jaw-dropping 2,100 hours of coursework.

African hair braiding is meant for textured hair and many see it as “natural” hair care. But as the lawsuit pointed out, most of the state cosmetology curriculum about textured hair deals with softening or straightening it to alter its natural state, the opposite of what this style of braiding does.

Iowa needs to continue its work on comprehensive licensing reform but these two examples are especially outrageous. Braiders and threaders often are women and come from immigrant families, so undue restrictions take away opportunities for Iowans who already have less economic mobility. The relevant skills can safely be learned in informal settings as they have been for generations.

In 2016, several months after the braiding lawsuit was filed, the Legislature and then-Gov. Terry Branstad removed the licensing requirements for hair braiders and the lawsuit was withdrawn. The 2,100-hour requirement of training for other cosmetologists remains.

If lawmakers and the governor again swoop in to address the problem, they should go a lot further than last time.

(319) 339-3156; adam.sullivan@thegazette.com