If the case is appealed and reaches the Supreme Court, a real possibility according to the Institute for Justice, the public interest law firm representing the monks, a suit waged on behalf of folks who hold all their possessions in common may rank among the most consequential economic freedom cases in a generation, and determine how far states and localities can go to regulate entrepreneurs in their jurisdictions.

In order to understand why, it's probably best to start back in 1914, when legislators in Baton Rouge passed a law to regulate the local death industry. Intending "to prevent the spread of infectious and contagious disease," and "to regulate the practice of embalming and the business of undertaking," they created the aptly named Louisiana State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors. Over the years, it's mostly been run by industry insiders -- current board members include owners or executives from at least four different funeral homes.

Skip ahead to 2007.

In the Archdiocese of New Orleans, there's an official newspaper, The Clarion Herald. Tipped off that nearby monks were launching a casket business, its staff published a small feature. In the death industry, the news spread quickly. A start-up was encroaching on the local monopoly funeral homes had on burial boxes, which were sometimes being sold at four times the wholesale price! The monks threatened those margins. And soon, they received a warning letter from the Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, informing them that they were in violation a regulation they'd never before encountered. It stated that only state-licensed funeral directors may engage in the retail sale of caskets.

Getting licensed as a funeral director is neither easy nor compatible with monastic life, as the monks would soon discover. Applicants must have a high school diploma, earn 30 hours of college credit, and apprentice full time in the industry for one year, learning how to handle and embalm dead bodies. As a requirement for building a rectangular box with a lid, affixing handles, and selling it without even seeing a dead body, that struck the monks as excessive. And even if they met those burdens, they'd have to convert their monastery into a "funeral establishment," a designation that would require a layout parlor for 30 people, a display room for six caskets, and body embalming equipment, among other things.

Had building and selling wooden boxes ever been so onerous?

Challenging the law would be tough too.

In order to prevail, the monks would have to prove Louisiana's regulation failed to meet a level of scrutiny that is most favorable to the government. In other words, if the state had any "rational basis" for requiring casket entrepreneurs to meet the standards of funeral home directors -- if doing so might even plausibly benefit consumers or safeguard public health -- the law would be upheld.



Despite that hurdle, attorneys for IJ were optimistic due to certain details of the case. Consumers in Louisiana are permitted to buy caskets from retailers other than funeral homes if they're purchased from outside the state -- for example, it's perfectly possible to buy a casket on Amazon.com. So keeping unlicensed monks out of the business didn't seem like it could afford any extra protection to consumers. Nor is there any requirement in Louisiana that a casket meet certain construction standards, or even a law saying dead bodies must be buried in caskets, facts that would undercut any attempt to argue that public health justified the regulation.