Case Info & Legal TeamThis case is about a young mom trying to start a business that will provide her with the flexibility she needs to raise her young son. But in Kansas, it is a crime to remove a single hair with an all-natural paste made of sugar, water, and lemon juice, without a license.
Bryn Green wants to provide customers with a single service: sugaring, an ancient technique that utilizes an all-natural sugar paste to remove unwanted hair. Kansas law, however, requires an unnecessary government issued license. The American Dream shouldn’t be crushed by unreasonable rules and regulations like these. What’s happening is unfair and unreasonable, and that’s why Kansas Justice Institute is helping Bryn fight back.
Sugaring is a safe and simple technique, dating back to at least ancient Egypt, which uses a simple mixture of sugar, water, and lemon juice to remove unwanted hair. Sugaring is gaining popularity and in higher demand because it is safer and less painful than waxing and utilizes only natural, non-toxic materials. Sugaring has become increasingly popular, offering sugarers countless opportunities for employment, entrepreneurship, and their own chance at the American dream.
Despite the simplicity and ease of sugaring, Kansas law requires sugarers to obtain a cosmetologist license or an esthetician license. A cosmetologist license requires a sugarer to complete at least 1,500 hours of instruction at an expensive cosmetology school, while an esthetician license requires a 1,000 hour course at an esthetician school. Making matters worse, hundreds of hours are spent learning cosmetology methods that sugarers do not use or need. For either license, it is estimated that less than 1% of the schooling is devoted to sugaring if it is even taught at all.
Kansas law also requires aspiring sugarers to pass examinations even though sugaring is barely tested, if it is tested at all. As a result, aspiring sugarers are required to endure hundreds of hours of irrelevant training, take irrelevant examinations, and spend tens of thousands of dollars on schooling, examinations, and fees just to be able to use sugar paste to remove hair.
The Kansas Constitution, however, forbids unreasonable occupational licensing regimes like this one and protects the right to earn an honest living. Kansans have the right to be free from unreasonable and oppressive restraints on their livelihood.
Bryn Green lives in Hays, Kansas, and obtained a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Business from Fort Hays State University. When she gave birth to her first child in 2022, she began looking for business opportunities that would allow her to help support her family while also providing her with the flexibility to raise her son.
For the past seven years, Bryn received sugaring services at a salon in Dodge City and believes that sugaring is a superior hair removal technique than waxing. Currently, there are no salons in Hays that offer sugaring, and Bryn sees an opportunity to fill this market need. Working as a sugarer would allow her the opportunity to earn a living providing a service she believes in while also allowing her to control her schedule to meet the needs of her family.
Bryn does not have a cosmetology or esthetician license. She does not have the time or the money to attend thousands of hours of training and pay tens of thousands of dollars of tuition to obtain a license that does not even teach students sugaring techniques. Even though esthetician school itself is prohibitively long and expensive, and has minimal teaching on sugaring, the closest licensed esthetician school is two and a half hours away in Wichita. The only school close enough to Hays is a cosmetology school which is even longer, more expensive, and teaches even less about sugaring.
As a result of these burdensome licensing requirements, Bryn’s dream is simply out of reach. That is why she has partnered with the Kansas Justice Institute to vindicate her right to earn an honest living free from unreasonable and oppressive government restrictions.
