Ashish Patel, Anverali Satani, Nazira Momin, Minaz Chamadia, and Vijay Lakshmi Yogi v. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation ( 2015 )


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  •                    IN THE SUPREME COURT OF TEXAS
    ════════════
    NO. 12-0657
    ════════════
    ASHISH PATEL, ANVERALI SATANI, NAZIRA MOMIN, MINAZ CHAMADIA,
    AND VIJAY LAKSHMI YOGI, PETITIONERS/CROSS-RESPONDENTS,
    v.
    TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF LICENSING AND REGULATION, ET AL.,
    RESPONDENTS/CROSS-PETITIONERS
    ══════════════════════════════════════════
    ON PETITION FOR REVIEW FROM THE
    COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD DISTRICT OF TEXAS
    ══════════════════════════════════════════
    JUSTICE WILLETT, joined by JUSTICE LEHRMANN and JUSTICE DEVINE, concurring.
    To understand the emotion which swelled my heart as I clasped this money,
    realizing that I had no master who could take it from me—that it was mine—that
    my hands were my own, and could earn more of the precious coin . . . . I was not
    only a freeman but a free-working man, and no master Hugh stood ready at the end
    of the week to seize my hard earnings.1
    Frederick Douglass’s irrepressible joy at exercising his hard-won freedom captures just
    how fundamental—and transformative—economic liberty is. Self-ownership, the right to put your
    mind and body to productive enterprise, is not a mere luxury to be enjoyed at the sufferance of
    governmental grace, but is indispensable to human dignity and prosperity.2
    Texans are doubly blessed, living under two constitutions sharing a singular purpose: to
    secure individual freedom, the essential condition of human flourishing. In today’s age of
    1
    FREDERICK DOUGLASS, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 259 (photo. reprint 2001) (1882).
    2
    Honest work, Pope Francis recently reflected, means more than just earning our daily bread: “Where there
    is no work, there is no dignity.” Pope Francis (Pontifex). June 11, 2014, 1:11 a.m. Tweet. Available at
    https://twitter.com/Pontifex/status/608909299704709120.
    staggering civic illiteracy—when 35 percent of Americans cannot correctly name a single branch
    of government—it is unsurprising that people mistake majority rule as America’s defining value.3
    But our federal and state charters are not, contrary to popular belief, about “democracy”—a word
    that appears in neither document, nor in the Declaration of Independence. Our enlightened 18th-
    and 19th-century Founders, both federal and state, aimed higher, upended things, and brilliantly
    divided power to enshrine a promise (liberty), not merely a process (democracy).
    One of our constitutions (federal) is short, the other (state) is long—like really long—but
    both underscore liberty’s primacy right away. The federal Constitution, in the first sentence of the
    Preamble, declares its mission to “secure the Blessings of Liberty.”4 The Texas Constitution
    likewise wastes no time, stating up front in the Bill of Rights its paramount aim to recognize and
    establish “the general, great and essential principles of liberty and free government.”5 The point is
    unsubtle and undeniable: Liberty is not provided by government; liberty preexists government. It
    is not a gift from the sovereign; it is our natural birthright. Fixed. Innate. Unalienable.
    * * *
    Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
    Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.6
    This case concerns the timeless struggle between personal freedom and government power.
    Do Texans live under a presumption of liberty or a presumption of restraint? The Texas
    3
    Press Release, Annenberg Pub. Policy Ctr. of the Univ. of Penn., Americans know surprisingly little about
    their government, survey finds (Sept. 17, 2014), available at http://cdn.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/wp-
    content/uploads/Civics-survey-press-release-09-17-2014-for-PR-Newswire.pdf (last visited June 25, 2015); see also
    ANNENBERG PUB. POLICY CTR., CIVICS SURVEY APPENDIX at 2 (2014) (providing the methodology for the study),
    http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/Civics-survey-appendix-09-17-14.pdf (last visited
    June 25, 2015).
    4
    U.S. CONST. pmbl.
    5
    TEX. CONST. art. I.
    6
    Widely, if not assuredly, attributed to Benjamin Franklin.
    2
    Constitution confers power—but even more critically, it constrains power. What are the outer-
    boundary limits on government actions that trample Texans’ constitutional right to earn an honest
    living for themselves and their families? Some observers liken judges to baseball umpires, calling
    legal balls and strikes, but when it comes to restrictive licensing laws, just how generous is the
    constitutional strike zone? Must courts rubber-stamp even the most nonsensical encroachments on
    occupational freedom? Are the most patently farcical and protectionist restrictions nigh
    unchallengeable, or are there, in fact, judicially enforceable limits?
    This case raises constitutional eyebrows because it asks building-block questions about
    constitutional architecture—about how we as Texans govern ourselves and about the relationship
    of the citizen to the State. This case concerns far more than whether Ashish Patel can pluck
    unwanted hair with a strand of thread. This case is fundamentally about the American Dream and
    the unalienable human right to pursue happiness without curtsying to government on bended knee.
    It is about whether government can connive with rent-seeking factions to ration liberty
    unrestrained, and whether judges must submissively uphold even the most risible encroachments.
    The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that the right to pursue a lawful calling
    “free from unreasonable governmental interference” is guaranteed under the federal Constitution,7
    and is “objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.”8 A pro-liberty
    presumption is also hardwired into the Texas Constitution, which declares no citizen shall be
    “deprived of life, liberty, property, [or] privileges or immunities”9—phrasing that indicates
    citizens already possess these freedoms, and government cannot take them “except by the due
    
    7 Greene v
    . McElroy, 
    360 U.S. 474
    , 492 (1959).
    8
    Washington v. Glucksberg, 
    521 U.S. 702
    , 703 (1997); see also 1 WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES
    *427 (“At common law every man might use what trade he pleased . . . .”).
    9
    TEX. CONST. art. I, § 19 (emphasis added).
    3
    course of the law of the land.”10 Texans are thus presumptively free, and government must justify
    its deprivations. So just how nonsensically can government stifle your constitutional right to put
    your know-how and gumption to use in a gainful trade?
    I recognize the potential benefits of licensing: protecting the public and preventing
    charlatanism. I also recognize the proven benefits of constitutional constraints: protecting the
    public and preventing collectivism. Invalidating irrational laws does not beckon a Dickensian
    world of run-amok frauds and pretenders. The Court’s view is simple, and simply stated: Laws
    that impinge your constitutionally protected right to earn an honest living must not be preposterous.
    By contrast, the dissents see government power in the economic realm as infinitely elastic,
    and thus limited government as entirely fictive, troubling since economic freedom is no less
    vulnerable to majoritarian oppression than, say, religious freedom—perhaps more so. Exalting the
    reflexive deference championed by Progressive theorists like Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,
    the dissents would seemingly uphold even the most facially protectionist actions. Stranger still,
    the principal dissent, while conceding that our state and federal Constitutions protect economic
    liberty, quotes liberally from Justice Holmes, who rejected that the Fourteenth Amendment does
    any such thing.11
    10
    
    Id. 11 The
    principal dissent dramatically—and predictably—accuses the Court of seeking to unleash the “Lochner
    monster,” trying to resurrect Lochner v. New York, 
    198 U.S. 45
    (1905), in which the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated
    on federal “liberty of contract” grounds a state maximum-hours law for bakery workers. Post, at 12. (Hecht, C.J.,
    dissenting). The Lochner bogeyman is a mirage but a ready broadside aimed at those who apply rational basis
    rationally. As one constitutional law scholar noted a generation ago, “‘Lochnerizing’ has become so much an epithet
    that the very use of the label may obscure attempts at understanding.” LAURENCE H. TRIBE, AMERICAN
    CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 435 (1st ed. 1978).
    I doubt the 3-0 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Judge Sparks of the Western
    District of Texas believed they were unleashing any monsters, or, scarier still, legislating from the bench!—when they
    recently struck down state economic regulations on rational-basis grounds. See St. Joseph Abbey v. Castille, 
    712 F.3d 215
    (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 
    134 S. Ct. 423
    (2013) (invalidating the Louisiana “casket cartel”); Brantley v. Kuntz, No.
    A-13-CA-872-SS, 
    2015 WL 75244
    (W.D. Tex. Jan. 5, 2015) (invalidating Texas barber-school regulations as applied
    to African hair braiding). Indeed, the Fifth Circuit in the casket cartel case dismissed the tired Lochner charge head-
    on, denying that the “ghost of Lochner [was] lurking about.” St. Joseph 
    Abbey, 712 F.3d at 227
    .
    4
    In any event, as Justice Holmes cruelly proved, dogmatic majoritarianism can exact a
    ruthless price. In Buck v. Bell, the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether Carrie Buck, a Virginia
    teenager raped and impregnated by her foster parents’ nephew, could be forcibly sterilized on
    grounds that she was “feeble minded.”12 Speaking through Justice Holmes, the Court credulously
    accepted at face value the government’s assertion that public welfare was a good-enough reason
    to forbid the “manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”13 Compulsory sterilization was
    preferable to waiting to “execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their
    imbecility.”14 Nothing—not even coercive eugenics—trumped judicial submissiveness to
    whatever the majority decreed. Justice Holmes was unyielding, thundering one of the most
    heartless, ignominious lines in Supreme Court history: “Three generations of imbeciles are
    enough.”15
    Justice Holmes later boasted to a friend that “[it] gave me pleasure, establishing the
    constitutionality of a law permitting the sterilization of imbeciles.”16 Unquestioning deference
    necessarily meant civil liberties were trampled, but Justice Holmes’s pro-statism minced no words:
    “a law should be called good if it reflects the will of the dominant forces of the community even
    12
    
    274 U.S. 200
    , 205 (1927).
    13
    
    Id. at 207.
            14
    
    Id. 15 Id.
            16
    Letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. to Lewis Einstein (May 19, 1927), in THE HOLMES-EINSTEIN
    LETTERS: CORRESPONDENCE OF MR. JUSTICE HOLMES AND LEWIS EINSTEIN 1903–1935 267 (James Bishop Peabody,
    ed., 1964).
    5
    if it will take us to hell.”17 In fact, said Justice Holmes, “if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I
    will help them. It’s my job.”18
    Like the Court, I favor a less hard-hearted and more liberty-minded view for Texas, one
    that sees the judiciary as James Madison did when he introduced the Bill of Rights, as an
    “impenetrable bulwark” against imperious government.19 The Texas Constitution enshrines
    structural principles meant to advance individual freedom; they are not there for mere show. Our
    Framers opted for constitutional—that is, limited—government, meaning majorities don’t possess
    an untrammeled right to trammel. The State would have us wield a rubber stamp rather than a
    gavel, but a written constitution is mere meringue if courts rotely exalt majoritarianism over
    constitutionalism, and thus forsake what Chief Justice Marshall called their “painful duty”—“to
    say, that such an act was not the law of the land.”20
    To be sure, the Capitol, not this Court, is the center of policymaking gravity, and judges
    are lousy second-guessers of the other branches’ economic judgments. Lawmakers’ policy-setting
    power is unrivaled—but it is not unlimited. Preeminence does not equal omnipotence. Politicians
    decide if laws pass, but courts decide if those laws pass muster. Cases stretching back centuries
    treat economic liberty as constitutionally protected—we crossed that Rubicon long ago—and there
    is a fateful difference between active judges who defend rights and activist judges who concoct
    17
    KEN I. KERSCH, CONSTRUCTING CIVIL LIBERTIES: DISCONTINUITIES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN
    CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 151 (2004).
    18
    Letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. to Harold Laski (Mar. 4, 1920), in 1 HOLMES-LASKI LETTERS: THE
    CORRESPONDENCE OF MR. JUSTICE HOLMES AND HAROLD J. LASKI 1916–1935 249 (Mark DeWolfe Howe ed., 1953).
    Holmesian deference was praised by turn-of-the-century Progressives who craved a pervasive regulatory state, and
    got it via the New Deal-era U.S. Supreme Court.
    19
    See 1 ANNALS OF CONG. 439 (1789) (Joseph Gales ed., 1843).
    20
    McCulloch v. Maryland, 
    17 U.S. 316
    , 423 (1819).
    6
    rights. If judicial review means anything, it is that judicial restraint does not allow everything. The
    rational-basis bar may be low, but it is not subterranean.
    I support the Court’s “Don’t Thread on Me” approach: Threaders with no license are less
    menacing than government with unlimited license.
    I.
    This case lays bare a spirited debate raging in legal circles, one that conjures legal
    buzzwords and pejoratives galore: activism vs. restraint, deference vs. dereliction, adjudication vs.
    abdication. The rhetoric at times seems overheated, but the temperature reflects the stakes. It
    concerns the most elemental—if not elementary—question of American jurisprudence: the proper
    role of the judiciary under the Constitution.
    Judicial duty requires courts to act judicially by adjudicating, not politically by legislating.
    So when is it proper for a court to strike down legislative or executive action as unconstitutional?
    There are people of goodwill on both sides, and as this case demonstrates, it seems a legal
    Rorschach test, where one person’s “judicial engagement” is another person’s “judicial
    usurpation.”21
    There are competing visions, to put it mildly, of the role judges should play in policing the
    other branches, particularly when reviewing economic regulations. On one side is the Progressive
    left, joined by some conservatives, who favor absolute judicial deference to majority rule. Judge
    Robert Bork falls into this camp. A conservative luminary, Bork is heir to a Progressive luminary,
    Justice Holmes, who also espoused judicial minimalism. Both men believed the foremost principle
    21
    When it comes to the “judicial activism” label, some observers throw up their hands entirely and insist it
    all turns on whose ox is gored. Justice Kennedy responds to charges of judicial activism this way: “An activist court
    is a court that makes a decision you don’t like.” Hon. Anthony Kennedy, Address at Forum Club of the Palm Beaches,
    Florida (May 14, 2010), available at http://www.c-span.org/video/?293521-1/justice-kennedy-remarks-supreme-
    court.
    7
    of American government was not individual liberty but majoritarianism.22 As Judge Bork put it,
    “majorities are entitled to rule, if they wish, simply because they are majorities.”23
    The other side advocates “judicial engagement” whereby courts meaningfully enforce
    constitutional boundaries, lest judicial restraint become judicial surrender.24 The pro-engagement
    camp argues the judiciary should be less protective of Leviathan government and more protective
    of individual freedom. Government exists, they contend, to secure pre-existing rights, as the
    Declaration makes clear in its first two paragraphs.25 Thus, when it comes to judicial review of
    laws burdening economic freedoms, courts should engage forthrightly, and not put a heavy, pro-
    government thumb on the scale.
    This much is clear: Spirited debates over judicial review have roiled America since the
    Founding, from Marbury v. Madison,26 to Worcester v. Georgia27 (against which President
    Jackson bellowed, “John Marshall has made his decision—now let him enforce it.”28), to the late
    19th and early 20th centuries, when Progressives opposed judicial enforcement of economic
    22
    Judge Bork believed legislative majorities should wield near-absolute power, not just with economic policy
    as favored by turn-of-the-century Progressives, but across the board, including the unenumerated rights enshrined
    during the so-called “rights revolution” of the mid-20th century.
    23
    ROBERT H. BORK, THE TEMPTING OF AMERICA 139 (1990).
    24
    TIMOTHY SANDEFUR, THE RIGHT TO EARN A LIVING—ECONOMIC FREEDOM AND THE LAW (2010) (tracing
    the history of the right to earn a living as it was understood by the Founders, through the Civil War Amendments, the
    Progressive era, and current controversies over restrictive licensure laws); DAMON ROOT, OVERRULED—THE LONG
    WAR FOR CONTROL OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT (2014) (chronicling the conflicting visions of judicial review and
    the degree to which courts should intervene to protect individual rights against government encroachment).
    25
    See THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE para. 1–2 (U.S. 1776).
    26
    
    5 U.S. 137
    (1803).
    27
    
    31 U.S. 515
    (1832).
    28
    HORACE H. HAGAN, EIGHT GREAT AMERICAN LAWYERS 79 (Fred B. Rothman & Co. 1987) (1923).
    8
    liberties, all the way to present-day battles over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.29
    In the 1920s and 1930s, liberals began backing judicial protection of noneconomic rights, while
    resisting similar protection for property rights and other economic freedoms. The Progressives’
    preference for judicial nonintervention was later embraced by post-New Deal conservatives like
    Judge Bork. The judicial-review debate, both raucous and reasoned, is particularly pitched today
    within the broader conservative legal movement. A prominent fault line has opened on the right
    between traditional conservatives who champion majoritarianism and more liberty-minded
    theorists who believe robust judicial protection of economic rights is indispensable to limited
    government.30
    When it comes to regulating the economy, Holmesian deference still dominates, as seen in
    the Supreme Court’s landmark 2012 decision upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable
    Care Act.31 During oral argument, the Solicitor General—echoing the dissenters in today’s case—
    admonished that striking down President Obama’s signature health-care law would amount to
    judicial activism that would “import Lochner-style substantive due process.”32 The Court, he
    implored, “has a solemn obligation to respect the judgments of the democratically accountable
    29
    See, e.g., Nat’l Fed’n of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius (NFIB), 
    132 S. Ct. 2566
    (2012); Burwell v. Hobby Lobby
    Stores, Inc., 
    134 S. Ct. 2751
    (2014); King v. Burwell, 
    759 F.3d 358
    (4th Cir. 2014), affirmed, __ S. Ct. __ (2015).
    30
    Judge Bork favored both constitutional originalism and judicial deference to the democratic process, two
    ideals that sometimes clash, producing what Professor Ilya Somin calls the “Borkean dilemma.” Ilya Somin, The
    Borkean Dilemma: Robert Bork and the Tension Between Originalism and Democracy, 80 U. OF CHI. L. REV.
    DIALOGUE 243 (2013). Originalism sometimes requires judicial invalidation of laws that contradict the Constitution’s
    original meaning. But striking down laws contradicts Bork’s preference for judicial minimalism. So while Judge Bork
    favored judicial deference, he also criticized as “judicial activism” certain New Deal-era Court decisions that expanded
    government control over the economy. BORK, supra note 23, at 56–57 (discussing Wickard v. Filburn, 
    317 U.S. 111
    (1942), and lamenting that the Court’s “new, permissive attitude toward congressional power was a manifestation of
    judicial activism”).
    31
    
    NFIB, 132 S. Ct. at 2566
    .
    32
    Transcript of Oral Argument at 30, Nat’l Fed’n of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius, 
    132 S. Ct. 2566
    (2012) (No. 11-
    398), available at http://www.archives.gov/research/court-records/supreme-court/11-398-tuesday.pdf.
    9
    branches of government.”33 A few days later, the President himself charged it would constitute
    raw judicial activism if the Court took the “unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law
    that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,”34 adding, “We have
    not seen a court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on an economic issue . . . for decades”
    —“We’re going to the ’30s, pre-New Deal.”35 We know how the story ended. The Court upheld
    the ACA on tax-power grounds, with Chief Justice Roberts famously stating, “It is not our job to
    protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”36
    Today’s case arises under the Texas Constitution, over which we have final interpretive
    authority, and nothing in its 60,000-plus words requires judges to turn a blind eye to transparent
    rent-seeking that bends government power to private gain, thus robbing people of their innate
    right—antecedent to government—to earn an honest living. Indeed, even if the Texas Due Course
    of Law Clause mirrored perfectly the federal Due Process Clause, that in no way binds Texas
    courts to cut-and-paste federal rational-basis jurisprudence that long post-dates enactment of our
    own constitutional provision, one more inclined to freedom.
    33
    
    Id. at 110.
    The Chief Justice rejected the Lochner epithet and turned the tables, saying if the Court adopted
    the government’s theory of the Commerce Clause, limited only to regulating insurance, it “would be going back to
    Lochner”—with courts selectively allowing Congress to use its commerce power to impose a health-insurance
    mandate but not an eat-your-broccoli mandate. 
    Id. at 39.
             34
    Jeff Mason, Obama takes a shot at Supreme Court over healthcare, REUTERS, Apr. 2, 2012,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/02/us-obama-healthcare-idUSBRE8310WP20120402.
    35
    Greg Jaffe, Why does President Obama criticize the Supreme Court so much?, WASH. POST, June 20, 2015,
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/why-does-president-obama-criticize-the-supreme-court-so-
    much/2015/06/20/b41667b4-1518-11e5-9ddc-e3353542100c_story.html.
    36
    
    NFIB, 132 S. Ct. at 2579
    . Two years earlier, however, in a political-speech case that involved a more
    searching standard of review, the Chief Justice declared, “there is a difference between judicial restraint and judicial
    abdication.” Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 
    558 U.S. 310
    , 375 (2010).
    10
    The principal dissent claims “the rational basis standard invokes objective reason as its
    measure,” a contention difficult to take seriously.37 Legal fictions abound in the law, but the federal
    “rational basis test” is something special; it is a misnomer, wrapped in an anomaly, inside a
    contradiction. Its measure often seems less objective reason than subjective rationalization. The
    dissent also says the fact that other states regulate threading provides “strong evidence that Texas’s
    regulatory framework has a rational basis.”38 In my view, what happens in the Aloha State makes
    not the slightest constitutional difference in the Lone Star State. Unconstitutional encroachments
    reach across time zones and centuries. Just this week, in a case that took almost 80 years to bring,
    the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a New Deal-era, raisin-confiscation
    regime that had spanned thirteen Presidents.39
    The test adopted today bears a passing resemblance to “rational basis”-type wording, but
    this test is rational basis with bite, demanding actual rationality, scrutinizing the law’s actual basis,
    and applying an actual test.40 In my view, the principal dissent is unduly diffident, concluding the
    37
    Post, at 18. (Hecht, C.J., dissenting).
    38
    
    Id. 39 Horne
    v. Dep’t of Agric., No. 14-275, 
    2015 WL 2473384
    (U.S. June 22, 2015).
    40
    While the dissenting Justices favor federal-style deference in economic matters, there is a notable
    distinction between the Texas Constitution and the federal Constitution as interpreted by federal courts. The Texas
    Constitution protects not just life, liberty, and property, but also “privileges or immunities,” language the U.S.
    Supreme Court read out of the Fourteenth Amendment in the Slaughter-House Cases, 
    83 U.S. 36
    (1872). Slaughter-
    House involved special-interest favoritism masquerading as a public-health measure, a law granting a private
    corporation an exclusive benefit at the expense of hundreds of local butchers. A few years earlier, when the Fourteenth
    Amendment was adopted to counter the Black Codes and other oppressive state laws, the amendment’s author,
    antislavery Representative John Bingham, confirmed the liberties it protected included “the right to work in an honest
    calling and contribute by your toil in some sort to the support of your fellowmen and to be secure in the enjoyment of
    the fruits of your toil.” CONG. GLOBE, 42D CONG., 1ST SESS., 86 app. (1871). The Fourteenth Amendment was a
    response to a host of post-Civil War actions to oppress former slaves. Section One, drafted by Representative
    Bingham, includes three clauses to safeguard individual rights: the Privileges or Immunities Clause, the Due Process
    Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause. So what are an American citizen’s privileges and immunities? According to
    perhaps the leading Fourteenth Amendment history, anti-slavery abuses spurred Congress to fortify all Americans’
    civil rights against overbearing state governments, and to restore the Constitution’s original purpose as “a document
    protecting liberty.” MICHAEL KENT CURTIS, NO STATE SHALL ABRIDGE: THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT AND THE
    BILL OF RIGHTS 7 (1986). See also AKHIL REED AMAR, THE BILL OF RIGHTS: CREATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 166
    (1998) (noting that the words “privileges,” “immunities,” “rights,” and “freedoms” are “roughly synonymous”). Citing
    11
    threading rules, while “excessive”41 and “obviously too much”42 are not “clearly arbitrary.”43 If
    these rules are not arbitrary, then the definition of “arbitrary” is itself arbitrary. Without discussing
    (or even citing) recent federal cases striking down nonsensical licensing rules under the supine
    federal test,44 the dissents sever “rational” from “rational basis,” loading the dice—relentlessly—
    in government’s favor.45 Their test is tantamount to no test at all; at most it is pass/fail, and
    government never fails.46
    Madison and other founders who used the words “rights,” “liberties,” “privileges,” and “immunities” interchangeably,
    CURTIS, supra at 64–65, Curtis found similar usage in William Blackstone’s influential 1765 Commentaries on the
    Laws of England, which described “privileges and immunities” as a blend of rights and liberties—although Curtis
    notes that Blackstone “divided the rights and liberties of Englishmen into those ‘immunities’ that were the residuum
    of natural liberties and those ‘privileges’ that society had provided in lieu of natural rights.” CURTIS, supra at 64.
    Boiled down, privileges are state-given civil rights while immunities are God-given natural rights.
    When the Court in Slaughter-House upheld 5-4 the Louisiana monopoly law, it stressed that the Privileges
    or Immunities Clause only protected rights guaranteed by the United States and did not restrict state police power.
    What’s the consensus view today of Slaughter-House? “Virtually no serious modern scholar—left, right, or center—
    thinks [that Slaughter-House] is a plausible reading of the [Fourteenth] Amendment.” Akhil R. Amar, Foreword: The
    Document and the Doctrine, 114 HARV. L. REV. 26, 123 n.327 (2000).
    The important point for today’s case is that Slaughter-House, while holding that the Fourteenth Amendment’s
    Privileges or Immunities Clause offered no protection for individual rights against state officials, underscored that
    states themselves possess power to protect their citizens’ privileges or immunities, including the right to pursue an
    honest living against illegitimate state intrusion. As the Court correctly notes, the drafters of the Texas Constitution
    were doubtless aware of this reservation of power to the states when they passed our own Privileges or Immunities
    Clause just two years later in 1875. One question lurking in today’s case was whether this Court would do to our
    Privileges or Immunities Clause what the U.S. Supreme Court did to the federal clause—nullify it by judicial fiat.
    41
    Post, at 11. (Hecht, C.J., dissenting).
    42
    
    Id. 43 Id.
    at 25.
    44
    See, e.g., St. Joseph Abbey v. Castille, 
    712 F.3d 215
    (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 
    134 S. Ct. 423
    (2013); Brantley
    v. Kuntz, No. A-13-CA-872-SS, 
    2015 WL 75244
    (W.D. Tex. Jan. 5, 2015).
    45
    The principal dissent cites our 1957 decision in State v. Richards, 
    301 S.W.2d 597
    (Tex. 1957), the last
    time we examined the constitutional protections due innocent property owners facing government seizure of their
    property. It merits mention that at least three members of this Court believe the modern asset-forfeiture regime
    “deserves attentive constitutional reconsideration, if not recalibration.” El-Ali v. State, 
    428 S.W.3d 824
    , 826 (Willett,
    J., joined by Lehrmann, J., and Devine, J., dissenting to denial of pet.). And two others are open to reconsidering
    Richards in a future case. 
    Id. at 824
    (Boyd, J., concurring, joined by Guzman, J.).
    46
    The dissents side with Justice Holmes’s oft-quoted Lochner dissent, even though Justice Holmes rejected
    there what the dissents reaffirm here: The Constitution does protect economic liberty. Justice Holmes indeed seems
    to exalt majority rule above all—except when he doesn’t. After he famously said, “I think that the word ‘liberty,’ in
    the Fourteenth Amendment, is perverted when it is held to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion,” he
    added this sweeping caveat: “unless it can be said that a rational and fair man necessarily would admit that the statute
    proposed would infringe fundamental principles as they have been understood by the traditions of our people and our
    12
    law.” Lochner v. New York, 
    198 U.S. 45
    , 76 (1905) (Holmes, J., dissenting). This proviso, according to Judge Robert
    Bork, “spoiled it all” and prompted Bork to accuse Justice Holmes, a fellow judicial minimalist, of activism himself.
    BORK, supra note 23, at 45. (“So Holmes, after all, did accept substantive due process, he merely disagreed . . . about
    which principles were fundamental.”).
    A quick word on Lochner. While the vote was 5-4, eight of nine Justices (all but Justice Holmes) agreed that
    the Constitution protects economic liberty. And Lochner was not the first Supreme Court case to say so. That happened
    eight years earlier in Allgeyer v. Louisiana, which defined “liberty” in the Fourteenth Amendment to include the
    freedom “to pursue any livelihood or avocation; and for that purpose to enter into all contracts which may be proper,
    necessary, and essential to his carrying out to a successful conclusion the purposes above mentioned.” 
    165 U.S. 578
    ,
    589 (1897). As Justice Harlan acknowledged in the principal Lochner dissent, “there is a liberty of contract which
    cannot be violated even under the sanction of direct legislative 
    enactment.” 198 U.S. at 68
    (Harlan, J., dissenting).
    Government may not “unduly interfere with the right of the citizen to enter into contracts” or to “earn his livelihood
    by any lawful calling, to pursue any livelihood or avocation.” 
    Id. at 65.
              Historical note: This is the first Justice Harlan, The Great Dissenter, not his grandson who served on the
    Court in the mid-20th century. The first Justice Harlan, a strong proponent of natural rights, famously dissented in
    Plessy v. Ferguson, 
    163 U.S. 537
    , 552 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting), overruled by Brown v. Bd. of Ed., 
    347 U.S. 483
    (1954), and also in the Civil Rights Cases, 
    109 U.S. 3
    , 33 (1883) (Harlan, J., dissenting), that struck down federal anti-
    discrimination laws. Some scholars believe that Justice Harlan’s dissent in Lochner had initially garnered a five-vote
    majority, but someone switched his vote.
    While Justice Harlan’s dissent, unlike Justice Holmes’s dissent, believed economic liberty was
    constitutionally enshrined, he understood that states have a valid police-power interest in advancing public welfare.
    
    Id. (“liberty of
    contract is subject to such regulations as the state may reasonably prescribe for the common good and
    the well-being of society”). A law should be struck down only if there is “no real or substantial relation between the
    means employed by the state and the end sought to be accomplished by its legislation.” 
    Id. at 69.
    Justice Harlan would
    have upheld the New York maximum-hours law, but he stressed the presumption of constitutionality can be rebutted
    by evidence showing the restriction was arbitrary, unreasonable, or discriminatory. He simply found the government’s
    health-and-safety justification plausible.
    Importantly, there was no disagreement—none—between the Lochner majority and Justice Harlan’s dissent
    over whether courts can legitimately scrutinize economic regulations. Nobody seriously disputes a state’s omnibus
    power to safeguard its citizens’ health and safety via economic regulation. Of course states have broad, inherent police
    power to enact general-welfare laws. Indeed, a few months after Lochner, the Court reaffirmed states’ “firmly
    established” authority “to prescribe such regulations as may be reasonable, necessary and appropriate” to advance
    “the general comfort, health, and general prosperity of the state.” Cal. Reduction Co. v. Sanitary Reduction Workers,
    
    199 U.S. 306
    , 318 (1905). And just three years later, the Court upheld a maximum hours law for women. Muller v.
    Oregon, 
    208 U.S. 412
    (1908). In fact, the Lochner-era Court upheld many more economic regulations than it
    overturned. Thomas Colby & Peter J. Smith, The Return of Lochner, 100 CORNELL L. REV. 527, 539–40 (2015). The
    disagreement in Lochner was over who bears the burden—the government to prove legitimacy, or the challenger to
    prove illegitimacy. Justice Harlan believed the latter: “when the validity of a statute is questioned, the burden of
    proof . . . is upon those who assert it to be unconstitutional.” 
    Lochner, 198 U.S. at 68
    (citations omitted) (Harlan, J.,
    dissenting). The Court today agrees, adopting an approach some might say tracks the principal Lochner dissent more
    than the Lochner majority.
    The core question is one of constitutional limitation. Should judges blindly accept government’s health-
    and-safety rationale, or instead probe more deeply to ensure the aim is not suppressing competition to benefit
    entrenched interests? A century and a half of pre-Lochner precedent allowed for judicial scrutiny of laws to ensure
    the laws actually intend to serve the public rather than a narrow faction. See generally HOWARD GILLMAN, THE
    CONSTITUTION BESIEGED: THE RISE AND DEMISE OF LOCHNER ERA POLICE POWERS JURISPRUDENCE (1993)
    (discussing the origins of Lochner-era jurisprudence). Lochner focused on a narrow issue: whether the maximum-
    hours law was truly intended to serve the general welfare or “other motives,” namely to advantage the bakers’ union
    and unionized bakeries over small, non-union bakeries, many of which employed disfavored immigrants.
    Interestingly, some of the Texas commentary immediately following Lochner was quite favorable, including
    in the Dallas Morning News, which wrote “The right of contract is one of the most sacred rights of the freeman, and
    any interference with such privilege by Legislatures or courts is essentially dangerous and vicious.” In Which the
    Right of Contract is Upheld, DALLAS MORNING NEWS, Apr. 20, 1905, at 6.
    A wealth of contemporary legal scholarship is reexamining Lochner, its history and correctness as a matter
    of constitutional law, and its place within broader originalist thought, specifically judicial protection of unenumerated
    13
    II.
    You take my house when you do take the prop /
    That doth sustain my house; you take my life /
    When you do take the means whereby I live.47
    Government understandably wants to rid society of quacks, swindlers, and incompetents.
    And licensing is one of government’s preferred tools, aiming to protect us from harm by
    credentialing certain occupations and activities. You can’t practice medicine in Texas without
    satisfying the Board of Medical Examiners. You can’t zoom down SH-130 outside Austin at 85
    miles per hour (reportedly the highest speed limit in the Western Hemisphere) without a driver’s
    license. Sensible rules undoubtedly boost our quality of life. And senseless rules undoubtedly
    weaken our quality of life. Governments at every level—national, state, and local—wield
    regulatory power, but not always with regulatory prudence, which critics say stymies innovation,
    raises consumer prices,48 and impedes economic opportunity with little or no concomitant public
    benefit.49 The academic literature has attained consensus: “a licensing restriction can only be
    rights such as economic liberty. See supra note 24. Long story short: Legal orthodoxy about Lochner is evolving
    among many leading constitutional theorists. See, e.g., Colby & Smith, supra at 527; DAVID E. BERNSTEIN,
    REHABILITATING LOCHNER—DEFENDING INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AGAINST PROGRESSIVE REFORM (2011).
    47
    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, act 4 sc. 1.
    48
    Licensing restrictions impact price “along four dimensions” according to one recent study:
    First, professional licensing can act as a barrier to entry into the profession. Second, licensing can
    establish rules of practice, like advertising bans, that restrict competition. Third, state boards can
    suppress interstate competition by recognizing licenses only from their own state. Finally, a
    profession can prevent competition by broadening the definition of its practice, bringing more
    potential competitors under its licensing scheme. These ‘scope-of-practice’ limitations tend to oust
    low-cost competitors that operate at the fringes of an established profession.
    Aaron Edlin & Rebecca Haw, Cartels by Another Name: Should Licensed Occupations Face Antitrust
    Scrutiny?, 162 U. PA. L. REV. 1093, 1112 (2014) (footnotes and citations omitted).
    49
    Some government labor economists have concluded that “mandatory entry requirements of licensing
    cannot necessarily be relied upon to raise the quality of services.” CAROLYN COX & SUSAN FOSTER, BUREAU OF ECON.,
    FTC, THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF OCCUPATIONAL REGULATION 21–27, 40 (1990), available at
    http://www.ramblemuse.com/articles/cox_foster.pdf.
    14
    justified where it leads to better quality professional services—and for many restrictions, proof of
    that enhanced quality is lacking.”50
    It merits repeating: Judicial duty does not include second-guessing everyday policy
    choices, however improvident. The question for judges is not whether a law is sensible but whether
    it is constitutional. Does state “police power”—the inherent authority to enact general-welfare
    legislation—ever go too far? Does a Texas Constitution inclined to limited government have
    anything to say about government irrationally subjugating the livelihoods of Texans?
    A.
    The Republic of Texas regulated just one profession: doctors.51 In 1889, the State of Texas
    added one more: dentists.52 Until the mid-20th century, occupational regulation in the Lone Star
    State was rare (aside from the post-Prohibition alcohol industry)53 and was generally limited to
    professions with a clear public-safety impact: nurses, pharmacists, optometrists, engineers, etc.
    50
    Edlin and Haw, supra note 48, at 1111–12 n.101 and accompanying text (citing numerous academic studies
    questioning the putative benefits of licensure).
    INTERIM REPORT TO THE 83RD TEX. LEG., 82D TEX. H. COMM. ON GOV’T EFFICIENCY & REFORM 57 (Jan.
    51
    2013), available at http://www.house.state.tx.us/_media/pdf/committees/reports/82interim/House-Committee-on-
    Goverement-Efficiency-and-Refrom-Interim-Report.pdf.
    52
    
    Id. 53 Traditionally,
    only the medical and legal professions were subject to occupational licensing. J.R.R., II,
    Note, Due Process Limitations on Occupational Licensing, 59 VA. L. REV. 1097, 1097 (1973). Later, as women,
    minorities and immigrants—those lacking political power—entered the labor market, incumbent interests lobbied
    politicians to erect barriers to thwart newcomers. For example, California called a constitutional convention in 1878
    to combat what the Workingmen’s Party called the “Chinese Menace,” an influx of immigrant laborers from China.
    The result, cheaper labor costs and thus cheaper goods and services, was intolerable to incumbent interests, who
    imposed severe barriers to entry. One convention delegate confessed his goal forthrightly: “to hamper them in every
    way that human ingenuity could invent.” SANDEFUR, supra note 24, at 146.
    One such xenophobic law targeted Chinese launderers, who dominated San Francisco’s laundry market. The
    U.S. Supreme Court said no. In Yick Wo v. Hopkins, the Court rejected efforts to persecute disfavored interests through
    arbitrary permitting laws. 
    118 U.S. 356
    (1886) (striking down San Francisco’s laundry-permitting ordinance, which,
    while couched in public-safety rhetoric, plainly aimed to eliminate competition from Chinese operators). The Court
    minced no words: “the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living . . . at the mere
    will of another seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself.”
    
    Id. at 370.
    15
    Since World War II, however, the economy, both nationally and here in Texas, has
    undergone a profound shift. States now assert licensing authority over an ever-increasing range of
    occupations, particularly in the fast-growing service sector, which makes up “three-quarters of
    gross domestic product and most job growth in the U.S.”54 During the 1950s, fewer than five
    percent of American workers needed a state license.55 By 1970 it had doubled to 10 percent, and
    by 2000 had doubled again.56 In 2006, nearly one-third of U.S. workers needed government
    permission to do their job.57
    This spike in licensing coincides with a decline in labor-union membership. “In fact,
    [occupational licensing] has eclipsed unionization as the dominant organizing force of the U.S.
    labor market.”58 Twice as many workers today are covered by licensing as by labor contracts.59
    Moreover, the pervasiveness of licensing seems unrelated to whether a state is labeled “red” or
    “blue” politically. Occupational regulation seems wholly disconnected from party-specific
    ideology. In addition, most economic regulations are enacted not by legislatures answerable to
    voters but by administrative bodies, often with scant oversight by elected officials.
    54
    Stephanie Simon, A License to Shampoo: Jobs Needing State Approval Rise, WALL ST. J., Feb. 7, 2011,
    available at http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703445904576118030935929752.
    
    55 Morris M
    . Kleiner & Alan B. Krueger, The Prevalence and Effects of Occupational Licensing, BRITISH J.
    OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS     676, 678 (2010).
    56
    
    Id. at 679.
             57
    
    Id. at 678.
    See also MORRIS M. KLEINER, LICENSING OCCUPATIONS: ENSURING QUALITY OR RESTRICTING
    COMPETITION? 1 (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2006); Morris M. Kleiner, Occupational
    Licensing: Protecting the Public Interest or Protectionism? 1 (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research,
    Policy Paper No. 2011-009, 2011).
    58
    Edlin and Haw, supra note 48, at 1102. Today, licensing substitutes to some extent for unionization. See
    Suzanne      Hoppough,      The     New       Unions,     FORBES.       Feb.      25,    2008,      available     at
    http://www.forbes.com/part_forbes/2008/0225/100.html.
    59
    Alan B. Krueger, Do You Need a License to Earn a Living? You Might Be Surprised at the Answer, N.Y.
    TIMES, Mar. 2, 2006, at C3.
    16
    The Lone Star State is not immune from licensure proliferation. An ever-growing number
    of Texans must convince government of their fitness to ply their trade, spurring the House
    Committee on Government Efficiency and Reform in 2013 to lament the kudzu-like spread of
    licensure: “The proliferation of occupational licensing by the State of Texas can be to the detriment
    of the very consumer the licensing is professing to protect.”60 Today the number of regulated
    occupations exceeds 50061—about 2.7 million individuals and businesses,62 roughly one-third of
    the Texas workforce,63 higher than the national average64—with many restrictions backed by
    heavy fines and even jail time. Importantly, these statistics reflect state-only regulations; local and
    federal rules raise the number of must-be-licensed workers higher still.65
    60
    INTERIM REPORT, supra note 51, at 58.
    61
    
    Id. 62 Id.
           63
    
    Id. 64 Id.
    (citing KLEINER, LICENSING OCCUPATIONS, supra note 57, at 12).
    65
    Kleiner & Krueger, supra note 55, at 678.
    17
    Unlike some states, Texas doesn’t yet require florists,66 interior designers,67 horse
    massagers,68 ferret breeders,69 or fortune tellers70 to get state approval (though the soothsayers
    would presumably see it coming). But the Lone Star State does require state approval to be a
    shampoo apprentice.71 And to be an in-person auctioneer72 (though not to be an internet
    auctioneer). And while you don’t need a license to be a bingo caller in Texas, you must be listed
    on the Registry of Approved Bingo Workers in order to yell out numbers and letters.73
    The “sum of good government,” Thomas Jefferson said in his first inaugural, was one
    “which shall restrain men from injuring one another”—indisputably true—but “shall leave them
    66
    Louisiana is the only state in the country that requires licenses for florists. See LA. REV. STAT. ANN. §§
    3:3804(A)(2), (3), (4), (C), (D), 3:3809 (2014). And until 2010, part of the licensing exam for aspiring florists included
    a flower-arranging demonstration . . . judged by their future competition. See 
    id. § 3:3807(B)(2)
    (2008), amended by
    H.B. 1407, 2010 Leg., Reg. Sess. (La. 2010); see also Robert Travis Scott, Florist bill delivered to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s
    desk,         THE            TIMES-PICAYUNE            (June           16,           2010),          available          at
    http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/06/florists_bill_delivered_to_gov.html.
    67
    See, e.g., FLA. STAT. ANN. §§ 481.213 (West 2015); LA. REV. STAT. ANN. § 37:3176 (West 2014); NEV.
    REV. STAT. ANN. § 623.180(1) (West 2014); D.C. CODE § 47-2853.103 (2015).
    68
    In Arizona and Nebraska, you can’t be a horse masseuse without a license. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. ANN. §
    32-2231(A)(4) (West 2015) (defining practice of veterinary medicine); 172 NEB. ADMIN. CODE § 182-004.02D (2015)
    (eligibility for licensure as an Animal Therapist in Massage Therapy); see also ANIMAL MASSAGE LAWS BY STATE,
    INT’L ASSOC. OF ANIMAL MASSAGE AND BODYWORK, http://www.iaamb.org/reference/state-laws-2013.html (last
    visited June 25, 2015).
    69
    See, e.g., MASS. GEN. LAWS ANN. ch. 131 § 77(2) (West 2015) (“[N]o person shall possess a ferret for
    breeding purposes without obtaining a license from the director. . . .”).
    70
    See 
    id. ch. 140
    § 185I(2) (“No person shall tell fortunes for money unless a license therefor has been issued
    by the local licensing authority.”).
    71
    TEX. OCC. CODE § 1602.267. In Tennessee, a shampoo license has a 300 hour instructional requirement.
    See Shampoo Technician, TN. DEP’T OF COMM. & INS. (last visited June 25, 2015),
    https://www.tn.gov/commerce/article/cosmo-shampoo-technician. Alabama also requires a license to practice as a
    “shampoo assistant.” See ALA. CODE § 34-7b-1(21) (2014). See also Simon, supra note 54 (surveying trade regulations
    in several states, including shampooing regulations in Texas and barber regulations in California).
    72
    TEX. OCC. CODE § 1802.051(a).
    73
    16 TEX. ADMIN. CODE § 402.402(b).
    18
    otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvements.”74 Without question,
    many licensure rules are justified by legitimate public health and safety concerns. And isolating
    the point at which a rule becomes unconstitutionally “irrational” eludes mathematical precision.
    But it is no more imprecise as when judges ascertain under the Constitution when a search is
    “unreasonable”75 or bail “excessive”76 or cause “probable”77 or punishment “cruel and unusual.”78
    Degree of difficulty aside, judges exist to be judgmental, hence the title.
    The Texas Constitution has something to say when barriers to occupational freedom are
    absurd or have less to do with fencing out incompetents than with fencing in incumbents. As Nobel
    economist Milton Friedman observed, “the justification” for licensing is always to protect the
    public, but “the reason” for licensing is shown by observing who pushes for it—usually those
    representing not consumers but vested, already-licensed practitioners.79 In other words,
    government’s coercive power is often wielded to quash newcomers. As two federal appellate
    judges provocatively put it, “The practical effect of rational basis review of economic regulation
    is the absence of any check on the group interests that all too often control the democratic process.
    It allows the legislature free reign to subjugate the common good and individual liberty to the
    electoral calculus of politicians, the whims of majorities, or the self-interest of factions.”80
    74
    President Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (Mar. 4, 1801), in 8 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS
    JEFFERSON 3–4 (Henry A. Washington ed., 1854).
    75
    U.S. CONST. amend. IV.
    76
    
    Id. amend. VIII.
            77
    
    Id. amend. IV.
            78
    
    Id. amend. VIII.
            79
    MILTON FRIEDMAN & ROSE FRIEDMAN, FREE TO CHOOSE 240 (1980) (emphasis in original).
    80
    Hettinga v. United States, 
    677 F.3d 471
    , 482–83 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (Brown, J., joined by Sentelle, C.J.
    concurring).
    19
    Summarizing: “Rational basis review means property is at the mercy of the pillagers. The
    constitutional guarantee of liberty deserves more respect—a lot more.”81
    Indeed, some fret that the focus of occupational regulation has morphed from protecting
    the public from unqualified providers to protecting practitioners from unwanted competition.
    Courts are increasingly asking whether societal benefits are being subordinated to the financial
    benefits of those lucky enough to be licensed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
    recently buried the so-called “casket cartel” in Louisiana, siding 3-0 with a group of woodworking
    Benedictine monks who supported their monastery by selling handcrafted pine coffins. State-
    licensed funeral directors found the competition unwelcome, and the monks were threatened with
    a fine and jail time for breaching Louisiana law that said only state-licensed funeral directors could
    sell “funeral merchandise.” In striking down the anticompetitive law, the Fifth Circuit explained:
    “The great deference due state economic regulation does not demand judicial blindness to the
    history of a challenged rule or to the context of its adoption nor does it require courts to accept
    nonsensical explanations for regulation.”82 While acknowledging that Williamson v. Lee
    Optical83—the Supreme Court’s authoritative treatment of rational-basis scrutiny—dictates
    deference to state policymakers, the Fifth Circuit underscored that “Williamson insists upon a
    rational basis,” adding, “a hypothetical rationale, even post hoc, cannot be fantasy” or impervious
    to “evidence of irrationality.”84
    81
    
    Id. at 483.
           82
    St. Joseph Abbey v. Castille, 
    712 F.3d 215
    , 226 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 
    134 S. Ct. 423
    (2013).
    83
    
    348 U.S. 483
    (1955).
    84
    
    Id. at 223.
    20
    A similar casket-cartel law was invalidated in 2002 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
    Sixth Circuit, the first federal appellate court since the New Deal to invalidate an economic
    regulation for offending economic liberties secured by the Fourteenth Amendment.85 The court
    found no sensible connection between the onerous licensing requirements and the law’s alleged
    “health and safety” purpose. The court rejected the state’s predictable cries of “Lochnerism” and
    said the alleged bases for the law came close to “striking us with ‘the force of a five-week-old,
    unrefrigerated dead fish.’”86 The Sixth Circuit concluded it was ludicrous to see the law as anything
    but “an attempt to prevent economic competition,”87 and that “protecting a discrete interest group
    from economic competition is not a legitimate governmental purpose.”88 Granting special
    economic favors to preferred interests may be a common government purpose—“the favored
    85
    Craigmiles v. Giles, 
    312 F.3d 220
    (6th Cir. 2002). The U.S. Supreme Court grounds economic liberty in
    the Fourteenth Amendment, but as discussed above, it does so within the judicially invented concept of “substantive
    due process” rather than within the textual Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Clause,
    drafted by the Committee on Reconstruction, was specifically enacted to relieve rigid constraints on economic liberty,
    including post-Civil War licensing systems that hamstrung the economic activities of freed slaves. See generally
    HAROLD M. HYMAN & WILLIAM M. WIECEK, EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW 319 (1982). Constitutionalizing well-
    understood rights, including the economic rights protected by the Civil Rights Act of 1866—making freedom actually
    meaningful—was the overriding point. And these protected economic rights included the right to practice a chosen
    trade. Jeffrey Rosen, Translating the Privileges or Immunities Clause, 66 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1241, 1250–51 (1998).
    As noted above, the Clause’s abolitionist author explained that it was intended to safeguard “the liberty . . . to work
    in an honest calling and contribute by your toil in some sort to the support of yourself, to the support of your fellowmen,
    and to be secure in the enjoyment of the fruits of your toil.” CONG. GLOBE, 42D CONG., 1ST SESS., 86 app. (1871). The
    Fourteenth Amendment’s legislative record is replete with indications that “privileges or immunities” encompassed
    the right to earn a living free from unreasonable government intrusion. 
    Id. As explained
    above, the U.S. Supreme Court’s nullification of the federal Privileges or Immunities Clause in
    Slaughter-House began the process of undermining the amendment’s civil-rights protections for black Americans in
    the South. See, e.g., United States v. Cruikshank, 
    92 U.S. 542
    (1875); Plessy v. Ferguson, 
    163 U.S. 537
    (1896)
    overruled by Brown v. Bd. of Ed., 
    347 U.S. 483
    (1954). Slaughter-House has been accused of “strangling the privileges
    or immunities clause in its crib.” Akhil R. Amar, The Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, 101 YALE L.J.
    1193, 1259 (1992). Worse, it emboldened legislatures to enact notorious Jim Crow laws. Scholars across the political
    spectrum agree that Slaughter-House reflects a deeply flawed understanding of constitutional history.
    86
    
    Craigmiles, 312 F.3d at 225
    (quoting United States v. Searan, 
    259 F.3d 434
    , 447 (6th Cir. 2001)).
    87
    
    Id. 88 Id.
    at 224.
    21
    pastime of state and local governments,” as the Tenth Circuit put it89—but common doesn’t mean
    constitutional. Merely asserting—and accepting—“Because government says so” is incompatible
    with individual freedom. Courts need not be contortionists, ignoring obvious absurdities to
    contrive imaginary justifications for laws designed to favor politically connected citizens at the
    expense of others.
    More and more, courts—even comedians90—are scrutinizing the entry barriers imposed by
    occupational regulations. Earlier this year, a federal district court in Austin rejected the state’s
    attempt to force a teacher of African hair braiding to meet state barber-school regulations.91 Isis
    Brantley was vexed as to why her Institute of Ancestral Braiding needed a 2,000-square foot
    facility, 10 barber chairs, and 5 sinks to teach people how to twist and braid hair.92 The court
    examined means and ends and agreed the requirements were senseless. 93 Why require sinks, for
    example, when braiders don’t wash hair, and state law allows braiders to use just hand sanitizer?94
    The court refused to accept blindly the state’s purported justifications. It conducted an actual
    judicial inquiry and observed the state was trying to “shoehorn two unlike professions ‘into a
    single, identical mold, by treating hair braiders—who perform a very distinct set of services—as
    89
    Powers v. Harris, 
    379 F.3d 1208
    , 1221 (10th Cir. 2004).
    90
    A few years ago, Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show lampooned state efforts to regulate hair braiding. See The
    Daily      Show     (Comedy       Central    television    broadcast   June       3,    2004),       available    at
    http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/adygsa/the-braidy-bill.
    91
    See Brantley v. Kuntz, No. A-13-CA-872-SS, 
    2015 WL 75244
    , *8 (W.D. Tex. Jan. 5, 2015) (“[T]he
    regulatory scheme . . . exclude[s] Plaintiffs from the market absent a rational connection . . .”).
    92
    See 
    id. at *2.
             93
    See 
    id. at *7.
             94
    See 
    id. at *6.
    The Oregonian recently profiled a hair braider in Oregon, where braiders must have a
    cosmetology license, who daily crosses the border into Washington, where braiders are exempt. Most of her clients
    cross the border, too. The options for customers are simple: pay the cartel price or find an illicit braider. See Anna
    Griffin, Braiding African American Hair at center of overregulation battle in Oregon, THE OREGONIAN (Aug. 11,
    2012), http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/08/braiding_african_american_hair.html.
    22
    if they were [barbers].’”95 The court stressed “the logical disconnect inherent in the scheme which
    contemplates the existence of hair-braiding schools but makes it prohibitively difficult for a hair-
    braiding school to enter the market.”96 The court concluded the rules lacked any “rational
    relationship to any legitimate government interest”97 and were thus unconstitutional under the
    Fourteenth Amendment.98
    Tellingly, the state declined to appeal, saying it would instead launch “a comprehensive
    review of the barber and cosmetology statutes” and “work with [the] legislative oversight
    committees on proposals to remove unnecessary regulatory burdens for Texas businesses and
    entrepreneurs.”99 Legislative response was swift—and unanimous—and Governor Abbott 15 days
    ago signed House Bill 2717 to deregulate hair braiding.100 But as with many matters (e.g., public
    school finance), it took a judicial ruling on constitutionality to spark legislative action.
    The U.S Supreme Court itself recently examined how states regulate professions,
    scrutinizing whether licensing boards dominated by industry incumbents are rightly focused on
    weeding out scammers and inept practitioners or wrongly focused on weeding out newcomers.101
    95
    Brantley, 
    2015 WL 75244
    , at *7 (quoting Clayton v. Steinagel, 
    885 F. Supp. 2d 1212
    , 1215 (D. Utah 2012))
    (quoting Clayton v. Steinagel, 
    885 F. Supp. 2d 1212
    , 1215 (D. Utah 2012)).
    96
    
    Id. 97 Id.
    at *8.
    98
    
    Id. 99 Angela
    Morris, Braider Wins Against State Barber Regulations, TEXAS LAWYER, Jan. 19, 2015, available
    at http://www.texaslawyer.com/id=1202715320677/Braider-Wins-Against-State-Barber-Regulations.
    100
    Act of May 22, 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., ch. 413, § 2, 2015 Tex. Sess. Law Serv. 2717 (to be codified at Tex.
    Occ.                 Code                §                 1601.003(2)(E)),                 available                at
    http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/84R/billtext/pdf/HB02717F.pdf#navpanes=0.
    101
    See Morris M. Kleiner, Occupational Licensing, 14 J. ECON. PERSPECTIVES 189, 191 (2000) (describing
    the composition of state licensing boards).
    23
    Earlier this year in North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC,102 the High Court
    held that a state dental board controlled by “active market participants” could be sued under federal
    antitrust law for cracking down on non-dentists who were offering teeth-whitening treatments.103
    The decision brought a smile to licensure critics who had long argued that self-regulation invites
    self-dealing and that state licensing boards prone to regulatory capture deserved no immunity for
    Sherman Act104 abuses. Ever since Parker v. Brown 80-plus years ago,105 such boards were deemed
    outside the Act’s ban on cartels because, unlike traditional cartels, they were sanctioned by the
    state.106 No more. Parker no longer insulates regulated regulators regulating to anticompetitive
    effect. Licensing boards comprised of private competitors will face Sherman Act liability if they
    flex power to smother aspiring entrepreneurs.107
    B.
    As today’s case shows, the Texas occupational licensure regime, predominantly impeding
    Texans of modest means, can seem a hodge-podge of disjointed, logic-defying irrationalities,
    where the burdens imposed seem almost farcical, forcing many lower-income Texans to face a
    choice: submit to illogical bureaucracy or operate an illegal business? Licensure absurdities
    102
    
    135 S. Ct. 1101
    (2015).
    103
    
    Id. at 1110.
             104
    See generally 15 U.S.C. §§ 1–7 (2004).
    105
    
    317 U.S. 341
    (1943). See also Cal. Retail Liquor Dealers Ass’n v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc., 
    445 U.S. 97
    ,
    105 (stating two standards for Parker state action immunity: (1) state articulation of its purpose to displace
    competition, and (2) active state supervision).
    106
    See 
    Parker, 317 U.S. at 351
    (“The Sherman Act makes no mention of the state as such, and gives no hint
    that it was intended to restrain state action or official action directed by a state.”).
    See N.C. State Bd. of Dental 
    Exam’rs, 135 S. Ct. at 1110
    –11 (“But while the Sherman Act confers
    107
    immunity on the States’ own anticompetitive policies out of respect for federalism, it does not always confer immunity
    where, as here, a State delegates control over a market to a non-sovereign actor. . . . For purposes of Parker, a
    nonsovereign actor is one whose conduct does not automatically qualify as that of the sovereign State itself.”) (citation
    omitted).
    24
    become apparent when you compare the wildly disparate education/experience burdens visited on
    various professions. The disconnect between the strictness of some licensing rules and their alleged
    public-welfare rationale is patently bizarre:
    Emergency Medical Technicians. EMTs are entrusted with life-and-death
    decisions. But in Texas, entry-level EMTs need only 140 hours of training before
    rendering life-saving aid.108 Contrast that with the radically more onerous
    education/experience requirements for barbers (300 hours),109 massage therapists
    (500 hours),110 manicurists (600 hours),111 estheticians (750 hours),112 and full-
    service cosmetologists (1,500 hours).113
    Backflow Prevention Assembly Testers. Of the number of states and the District of
    Columbia that require licenses for backflow prevention assembly testers, the Lone
    Star State is the only place where it takes more than two weeks of
    training/experience—way more. Fifty times more. Not two weeks but two years.114
    State licensing impacts our lives from head to toe. Literally. Starting at the top, where does
    hair end and the beard begin? Texas law has been quite finicky on the matter, leading Texas barbers
    and cosmetologists to spend years splitting legal hairs and clogging Texas courts. Both of these
    state-licensed professionals may cut hair, but until 2013 only barbers, not cosmetologists, had state
    108
    25 TEX. ADMIN. CODE § 157.32(c)(2)(B).
    109
    TEX. OCC. CODE § 1601.253(c)(2).
    110
    
    Id. § 455.156(b)(1).
             111
    
    Id. § 1601.257(b)(3).
             112
    
    Id. § 1602.257(b)(3).
             113
    
    Id. § 1602.254(b)(3).
    A Class A Barber who completes an additional 300 hours of instruction in
    cosmetology—a total of 600 hours of training—may also be eligible to become a full-service cosmetologist.
    
    Id. § 1602.254(c).
              114
    See TEX. HEALTH & SAFETY CODE § 341.034(c); 30 TEX. ADMIN. CODE § 30.60. Although one can begin
    working as a backflow prevention assembly tester with only 40 hours of instruction in Texas, obtaining a license
    requires two years of work experience. See, e.g., 30 TEX. ADMIN. CODE § 30.60(4)–(5). In contrast, other states do not
    require pre-licensure work experience in addition to knowledge-based examinations. See IDAHO ADMIN CODE ANN.
    § r.24.05.01.335 (2014) (requirements for a backflow assembly tester license); MINN. STAT. § 326B.42 (West 2015)
    (defining “backflow prevention tester” as an individual qualified by training prescribed by the Plumbing Board);
    MINN. DEP’T OF LABOR & INDUS., Minnesota backflow agreement 2013, ASSE INT’L Ltr. (Oct. 15, 2013) (determining
    the requirements for certification), available at http://www.dli.mn.gov/CCLD/PDF/pe_agree.pdf; MO. CODE REGS.
    Tit. 10, § 60-11.030 (2015) (providing for certification upon completion of a written exam); UTAH ADMIN. CODE r.
    309-305-5 (2015) (providing for certification upon completion of written and practical examinations).
    25
    permission to wield a razor blade to shave facial hair. Before 2013, if you wanted your beard
    shaved, you had to visit a barber (probably a man) and not a cosmetologist (probably a woman).115
    And what is a “beard” anyway? Why, it’s the facial hair below the “line of demarcation” as defined
    in the Administrative Code.116 Even the Attorney General of Texas got all shook up wondering
    whether Elvis’s famous sideburns “were hair which a cosmetologist might trim, or a partial beard
    which could be serviced only [by] a barber.”117
    At the other bodily extreme, what’s the demarcation between the foot (which podiatrists
    can treat) and the ankle (which they can’t)? These are high-stakes disputes, and sometimes the
    licensing bodies have jurisdictional spats with each other, usually over “scope of practice” issues.
    So where does the foot end and the ankle begin? In 2010, this Court ended a nearly ten-year legal
    battle between, in one corner, the Texas Medical Association and Texas Orthopedic Association,
    and in the other, the Texas State Board of Podiatric Medical Examiners and Texas Podiatric
    Medical Association.118
    115
    Prior to the 1960s and 1970s, rigid state laws codified sexual stereotypes that distinguished male barbers
    and barbershops from female cosmetologists (or beauticians) and beauty parlors. Unisex hair salons became in vogue
    in the late 1960s through the 1970s as courts invalidated these state statutes under the equal protection clause of the
    Fourteenth Amendment.
    Today, although there is hardly a distinction between most barber and cosmetology services, there is plenty
    of opportunity for overzealous regulators to tag unsuspecting shop owners with “gotcha” fines. See, e.g., Tex. Dep’t
    of Licensing & Regulation v. Roosters MGC, LLC, No. 03-09-00253-CV, 
    2010 WL 2354064
    (Tex. App.—Austin
    June 10, 2010, no pet.) (discussing whether a cosmetologist’s use of a safety razor to remove hair from a customer’s
    neck or face violates state law controlling what services can be provided exclusively by barbers).
    116
    16 TEX. ADMIN. CODE §§ 82.10 (8), (23).
    117
    Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. No. JC-0211 (2000) (“We think it likely that most observers would consider the
    sideburns worn by the late Elvis Presley at the time of his early success in 1956 as part of his hair. On the other hand,
    whether the muttonchops which adorned his face at the time of his death were hair which a cosmetologist might trim,
    or a partial beard which could be serviced only a barber, is a question which in the absence of any articulated standard
    might well present difficulties to a cosmetologist who wished to remain within his or her licensed practice.”).
    118
    Tex. Orthopaedic Ass’n v. Tex. State Bd. of Podiatric Med. Exam’rs, 
    254 S.W.3d 714
    (Tex. App—Austin
    2008, pet. denied) (invalidating the Texas State Board of Podiatric Medical Examiners rule defining the word “foot”).
    26
    According to the academic literature, the real-world effects of steroidal regulation are
    everywhere: increased consumer cost; decreased consumer choice; increased practitioner income;
    decreased practitioner mobility119—plus shrunken economic prospects for lower income, would-
    be entrepreneurs.120 Thomas Edison, with little formal schooling, likely could not be a licensed
    engineer today, nor could Frank Lloyd Wright be a licensed architect.121
    III.
    No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would
    certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.122
    Anyone acquainted with human nature understands, as Madison did, that when people, or
    branches of government, are free to judge their own actions, nothing is prohibited. The Court
    recognizes that Texans possess a basic liberty under Article I, Section 19 to earn a living. And to
    safeguard that guarantee, the Court adopts a test allergic to nonsensical government encroachment.
    I prefer authentic judicial scrutiny to a rubber-stamp exercise that stacks the legal deck in
    government’s favor.
    My views are simply stated:
    119
    See e.g., SANDEFUR, supra note 24, at 24.
    120
    
    Id. (noting that
    monopoly laws and restrictive licensing schemes were “often used to give economic favors
    to politically influential lobbyists . . .”).
    121
    One powerful way regulations handicap innovation is through sweeping, inflexible, one-size-fits-all
    measures that crowd out novel services. For example, in the recent teeth-whitening case at the U.S. Supreme Court,
    the state dental board defined dentistry broadly to include teeth whitening. N.C. State Bd. of Dental Exam’rs, 135 S.
    Ct. 1101, 1120 (2015). In today’s case, eyebrow threaders want to thread eyebrows—and only want to thread
    eyebrows—but Texas defines the regulated trade of cosmetology so broadly, and irrationally, that threaders must take
    pricey and time-consuming classes to learn, well, nothing about threading but lots about non-threading. These Texans
    aim to provide a single service, but the government—exercising maximum will but minimum judgment—shackles
    creativity and innovation by lumping threading in with licensed, full-fledged cosmetology and requiring people to
    spend untold hours and dollars learning wholly irrelevant cosmetology techniques. The result, disproportionately
    affecting the poor, is the so-called “Cadillac effect”: would-be entrepreneurs squashed by exorbitant start-up costs,
    and would-be consumers forced to either (1) pay a higher-than-necessary price (a Cadillac) when all they want to buy
    is a discrete service at a lower price (a Kia), or (2) go without, or perhaps try to do it themselves.
    122
    THE FEDERALIST No. 10, at 79 (James Madison) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961).
    27
    1. The economic-liberty test under Article I, Section 19 of the Texas Constitution is
    more searching than the minimalist test under the Fourteenth Amendment to the
    United States Constitution.
    Even under the lenient rational-basis test—“the most deferential of the standards of
    review”123—the would-be threaders should win this case. It is hard to imagine anything more
    irrational than forcing people to spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on classes that
    teach everything they don’t do but nothing they actually do. Not one of the 750 required hours of
    cosmetology covers eyebrow threading. Government-mandated barriers to employment should
    actually bear some meaningful relationship to reality.
    It is instructive to consider the U.S. Supreme Court’s first occupational licensing case, from
    1889. In Dent v. West Virginia124—which has never been overruled and is still cited
    approvingly125—the Court upheld a physician-licensing regime, calling it a way to protect “the
    general welfare of [the] people” and “secure them against the consequences of ignorance and
    incapacity, as well as of deception and fraud.”126 But the Court cautioned that constitutional limits
    exist. Government is free to mandate requirements “appropriate to the calling or profession,” but
    not those that “have no relation to such calling or profession.”127 Why? Because that would
    “deprive one of his right to pursue a lawful vocation.”128 Restrictions must have a reasonable
    connection to the person’s fitness or capacity. That explains the High Court’s 1957 ruling in
    123
    BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY 1453 (10th ed. 2009).
    124
    
    129 U.S. 114
    (1889).
    125
    See, e.g., Conn v. Gabbert, 
    526 U.S. 286
    , 292 (1999) (citing Dent with approval but declining to extend).
    126
    
    Dent, 129 U.S. at 122
    .
    127
    
    Id. 128 Id.
    28
    Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners,129 the only time the Court has struck down a licensing
    restriction under rational-basis review. In Schware, the Court invalidated New Mexico’s attempt
    to bar a Communist Party member from practicing law: “any qualification must have a rational
    connection with the applicant’s fitness or capacity to practice.”130
    The federal rational-basis requirement debuted amid Depression-era upheaval in 1934,
    when the Court in Nebbia v. New York,131 criminalizing the sale of milk below the government-
    approved price, held “a State is free to adopt whatever economic policy may reasonably be deemed
    to promote public welfare,”132 so long as it is not “unreasonable or arbitrary.”133 Nebbia was a
    constitutional bombshell, and its abandonment of strong judicial protection for economic liberty
    presaged a vast expansion of government power. Twenty years later came the Court’s authoritative
    guidance on Fourteenth Amendment review of economic regulation: Williamson v. Lee Optical.134
    In Lee Optical, the Court, while implicitly recognizing a liberty right to pursue one’s chosen
    occupation, held that economic regulation—here, forbidding opticians from putting old lenses in
    new frames—would be upheld if the court could conjure out of thin air any hypothetical reason
    why lawmakers might have enacted the law.135 Uncertainty has persisted for decades, partly
    because, as the Court acknowledges, “Our cases have not elaborated on the standards for
    129
    
    353 U.S. 232
    , 238–39 (1957) (holding that former communist ties are not sufficiently related to the
    practice of law to warrant disbarment).
    130
    
    Id. at 239.
            
    131 291 U.S. at 530
    (1934).
    132
    
    Id. at 537.
            133
    
    Id. at 530.
            134
    
    348 U.S. 483
    (1955).
    135
    
    Id. at 487–89.
    29
    determining what constitutes a ‘legitimate government interest.’”136 Some federal circuits,
    including the Fifth, have held it is improper to regulate solely to insulate incumbent business from
    competition.137 But with a few notable exceptions, like the recent “casket cartel”138 and African
    hair-braiding cases,139 rational-basis review under the Fourteenth Amendment is largely a judicial
    shrug.
    Indeed, federal-style scrutiny is quite unscrutinizing, with many burdens acing the rational-
    basis test while flunking the straight-face test. As the U.S. Supreme Court held almost 80 years
    ago in United States v. Carolene Products,140 government has no obligation to produce evidence
    to sustain the rationality of its action; rather, “the existence of facts supporting the legislative
    judgment is to be presumed.”141 Courts “never require a legislature to articulate its reasons for
    enacting a statute” and will uphold a law “if there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that
    could provide a rational basis” for it.142 Indeed, it is “entirely irrelevant” whether the purported
    justification for a burdensome law “actually motivated the legislature.”143 Challengers must negate
    136
    Nollan v. Cal. Coastal Comm’n, 
    483 U.S. 825
    , 834 (1987). Indeed, the label “rational basis” is misleading
    because the federal test doesn’t require the law to actually make sense. Rather, it asks whether a lawmaker maybe,
    possibly, conceivably, plausibly, imaginably, hypothetically might have thought it was a good idea. It doesn’t even
    matter if lawmakers actually intended to violate the Constitution. The law will be upheld so long as a court can conjure
    any legitimate public purpose for the law. One complication: The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to articulate with
    precision what constitutes a “legitimate” government interest. But how can one make sense of the “legitimate state
    interest” requirement unless and until the Court explains what purposes are and are not acceptable? Answering the
    question would necessarily require the Court to state straightforwardly that some things are illegitimate state interests.
    137
    See, e.g., Craigmiles v. Giles, 
    312 F.3d 220
    (6th Cir. 2002); Merrifield v. Lockyer, 
    547 F.3d 978
    (9th Cir.
    2008); St. Joseph Abbey v. Castille, 
    712 F.3d 215
    (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 
    134 S. Ct. 423
    (2013).
    138
    See St. Joseph 
    Abbey, 712 F.3d at 215
    .
    139
    Brantley v. Kuntz, No. A-13-CA-872-SS, 
    2015 WL 75244
    (W.D. Tex. Jan. 5, 2015).
    140
    304 U.S.152 (1938).
    141
    
    Id. at 152.
             142
    FCC v. Beach Commc’ns, Inc., 
    508 U.S. 313
    , 315 (1993).
    143
    
    Id. at 307,
    315.
    30
    every conceivable basis that might support it,144 and judges are exhorted to invent a colorable
    justification if the one articulated by the government falls short. All this explains why critics charge
    the test is less “rational basis” than “rationalize a basis.”
    The dissents would subordinate concrete scrutiny to conjectural scrutiny that grants a nigh-
    irrebuttable presumption of constitutionality. It is elastic review where any conceivable,
    theoretical, imaginary justification suffices. In my view, Texas judges should instead conduct a
    genuine search for truth—as they do routinely in countless other constitutional areas—asking
    “What is government actually up to?” When constitutional rights are imperiled, Texans deserve
    actual scrutiny of actual assertions with actual evidence.
          Should Texas courts reflexively accept disingenuous or smokescreen
    explanations for the government’s actions? No.
          Is government allowed to prevail with purely illusory or pretextual justifications
    for a challenged law? No.
          Must citizens negate even purely hypothetical justifications for the
    government’s infringement of liberty? No.
          Are Texas courts obliged to jettison their truth-seeking duty of neutrality and
    help government contrive post hoc justifications? No.
    Texas judges should discern whether government is seeking a constitutionally valid end
    using constitutionally permissible means. And they should do so based on real-world facts and
    without helping government invent after-the-fact rationalizations. I believe the Texas Constitution
    requires an earnest search for truth, not the turn-a-blind-eye approach that prevails under the
    federal Constitution.145
    144
    
    Id. at 314–15.
             145
    As mentioned above, the Texas Constitution has its own “privileges or immunities”-like language, and
    while Slaughter-House nullified federal protection, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that states were proper guardians
    of the “privileges or immunities” of state citizenship, including the right to pursue a calling. Slaughter-House Cases,
    
    83 U.S. 36
    , 77–78 (1873). Texas did exactly that in its 1875 Constitution, acting quickly on the Court’s statement that
    31
    2. The Texas Constitution narrows the difference in judicial protection given to
    “fundamental” rights (like speech or religion) and so-called “non-fundamental”
    rights (like the right to earn a living).
    The jurisprudential fact of the matter is that courts are more protective of some
    constitutional guarantees than others. One bedrock feature of 20th-century jurisprudence, starting
    with the U.S. Supreme Court’s New Deal-era decisions, was to relegate economic rights to a more
    junior-varsity echelon of constitutional protection than “fundamental” rights. Nothing in the
    federal or Texas Constitutions requires treating certain rights as “fundamental” and devaluing
    others as “non-fundamental” and applying different levels of judicial scrutiny, but it is what it is:
    Economic liberty gets less constitutional protection than other constitutional rights.
    This is not opinion but irrefutable, demonstrable fact. Ever since what is universally known
    as “the most famous footnote in constitutional law”146—footnote four in Carolene Products in
    1938147—the U.S. Supreme Court has applied varying tiers of scrutiny to constitutional challenges.
    Simplified, the Court divides constitutional rights into two discrete categories: fundamental and
    non-fundamental. Upshot: Your favored First Amendment speech rights receive stronger judicial
    protection than your disfavored Fifth Amendment property rights. The fragmentation is less logical
    than rhetorical, and is anchored less in principle than in power. Under the post-New Deal picking
    and choosing, speech gets preferred status while economic liberty is treated as “a poor
    relation”148—despite the Due Process Clause’s explicit inclusion of “property” (and given the High
    protection of individuals’ non-federal privileges and immunities was a state concern. As the Court notes, however, the
    plaintiffs did not raise a separate privileges or immunities challenge.
    146
    See, e.g., Felix Gilman, The Famous Footnote Four: A History of the Carolene Products Footnote, 465 S.
    TEX. L. REV. 163, 165 (2004).
    147
    
    304 U.S. 144
    , 152 n.4 (1938) (creating a dichotomy between laws that regulate economic affairs, which
    get deferential judicial review, and laws that curtail important personal liberties or that target “discrete and insular
    minorities,” which get more searching judicial scrutiny).
    148
    Dolan v. City of Tigard, 
    512 U.S. 374
    , 392 (1994).
    32
    Court’s nullification of the Privilege or Immunities Clause in Slaughter-House). Speech rights get
    no-nonsense “strict scrutiny” to ensure government is behaving itself while property rights get
    servile, pro-government treatment.
    For example, when courts decide an Establishment Clause challenge under the First
    Amendment, they normally defer to a State’s asserted secular purpose. But such deference is not
    blind. Courts don’t simply take government’s word for it; they are careful to ensure that a
    “statement of such purpose be sincere and not a sham.”149 Same with gender classifications. The
    Court in 1996 struck down Virginia’s exclusion of women from Virginia Military Institute,
    explaining that government’s asserted justification must be “genuine,” as opposed to one that’s
    been “hypothesized or invented post hoc in response to litigation.”150
    Digital privacy under the Fourth Amendment is another constitutional area where the U.S.
    Supreme Court requires real-world evidence rather than putting a pro-government thumb on the
    scale. Recently, in the landmark case Riley v. California,151 prosecutors, citing concerns for officer
    safety and preserving evidence, insisted they did not need a warrant before searching an arrested
    suspect’s smartphone. The Court unanimously rejected the prosecutors’ excuses, making clear that
    justifications for burdening constitutional rights must be concrete, non-imaginary concerns “based
    on actual experience.”152 The Court held there was no real and documented evidence that
    warrantless searches were necessary to protect officers.153 As for evidence destruction, the Court
    149
    Edwards v. Aguillard, 
    482 U.S. 578
    , 586–87 (1987).
    150
    Unites States v. Virginia, 
    518 U.S. 515
    , 533 (1996).
    151
    
    134 S. Ct. 2473
    (2014).
    152
    
    Id. at 2485.
           153
    
    Id. at 2494.
    33
    was likewise unmoved, noting again the absence of actual evidence to back the State’s assertion,
    adding that in any event, law enforcement has “more targeted ways to address those concerns.”154
    Some constitutional rights fall somewhere in between, like “commercial speech,” not
    because the Constitution draws that distinction but because judges do. Commercial speech—
    advertisements and other business-related speech—is a hybrid under U.S. Supreme Court
    precedent, involving speech rights (protected vigorously) and economic rights (protected not so
    vigorously).155 Imagine a law that makes it illegal to advertise Axe Body Spray because lawmakers
    believe it endangers the public. This law plainly burdens speech, but it burdens economic speech,
    which receives less judicial protection than, say, political speech.156 Nonetheless, commercial
    speech restrictions still get meaningful judicial review. Courts would examine three factors: (1)
    whether government has a “substantial interest” in burdening the speech; (2) whether the
    restriction actually furthers that interest; and (3) whether there are less restrictive ways to achieve
    the stated goal so that speech is restricted as little as necessary.157 Government bears the burden of
    proof, and the law receives a serious judicial pat-down, including whether it was honestly driven
    by a desire to serve public interests or was merely a pretext to serve private interests. Now imagine
    a different law, one banning the sale of Axe Body Spray. With this law, the legal deck is shuffled
    differently, and a judge would apply a less-rigorous test because the law targets not commercial
    speech but commercial activity, a so-called non-fundamental right. Because this law focuses on
    154
    
    Id. at 2487.
             155
    The Court first recognized the right “to follow any lawful calling, business, or profession he may choose”
    in Dent v. West Virginia, 
    129 U.S. 114
    , 121 (1889). For 126 years the Court has reaffirmed that right, even though
    judicial protection of it has waned. See supra notes 124–29 and accompanying text.
    156
    Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 
    131 S. Ct. 2653
    , 2672 (2011) (“Indeed the government’s legitimate interest in
    protecting consumers from ‘commercial harms’ explains ‘why commercial speech can be subject to greater
    governmental regulation than noncommercial speech.’”) (citations omitted).
    157
    
    Id. at 2672–84.
    34
    economic activity, government wouldn’t have to prove its health claims, or show that less
    restrictive means were available, or convince a judge that the law’s purported purpose was a pretext
    to mask its true purpose.158
    But “economic” and “noneconomic” rights indisputably overlap. As the U.S. Supreme
    Court has recognized, freedom of speech would be meaningless if government banned bloggers
    from owning computers. Economic freedom is indispensable to enjoying other freedoms—for
    example, buying a Facebook ad to boost your political campaign. A decade (and three days) ago
    in Kelo v. City of New London,159 the landmark takings case that prompted a massive national
    backlash,160 Justice Thomas’s dissent lamented the bias against economic rights this way:
    “Something has gone seriously awry with this Court’s interpretation of the Constitution. Though
    citizens are safe from the government in their homes, the homes themselves are not.”161
    Kelo is indeed illustrative, as the rational-basis test applies in eminent-domain cases, too,
    notwithstanding the assurance in footnote four of Carolene Products that alleged violations of the
    Bill of Rights deserve heightened scrutiny. Even though the Fifth Amendment explicitly protects
    158
    The constitutional double standard becomes perplexing in cases where fundamental and non-fundamental
    rights overlap. A few years ago, the Eleventh Circuit upheld the constitutionality of an Alabama law banning the
    commercial distribution of sex toys. Williams v. Morgan, 
    478 F.3d 1316
    (11th Cir. 2007). The case involved the
    collision of sexual activity (deemed fundamental) and commercial activity (deemed non-fundamental). Plaintiffs
    aimed for strict scrutiny by framing the case in sexual-privacy terms because they knew if the case was treated as an
    economic-rights case, the ban would likely survive rational-basis review. The Eleventh Circuit applied rational-basis
    review and upheld the law, viewing the case as one about accessing sex toys and not about using sex toys. Result:
    Purchasing items for the bedroom can be regulated, but using them consensually cannot. The Fifth Circuit held the
    opposite way, saying a similar Texas ban violated the Due Process Clause in Reliable Consultants, Inc. v. Earle, 
    517 F.3d 738
    , 740 (5th Cir. 2008).
    159
    
    545 U.S. 469
    (2005) (upholding the power of government to condemn private property for economic-
    development purposes).
    160
    In the wake of Kelo, 45 states enacted property-rights reform to curb eminent domain. See Ilya Somin,
    The political and judicial reaction to Kelo, WASH. POST, June 4, 2015, available at
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/04/the-political-and-judicial-reaction-to-
    kelo/.
    161
    
    Kelo, 545 U.S. at 518
    (Thomas, J., dissenting).
    35
    property, the U.S. Supreme Court has supplanted the Carolene Products bifurcation with rational-
    basis deference in takings cases. The Kelo Court stressed its “longstanding policy of deference to
    legislative judgments,”162 and its unwillingness to “second-guess”163 the city’s determination as to
    “what public needs justify the use of the takings power.”164 Justice O’Connor’s scathing dissent,
    her final opinion on the Court, forcefully accused her colleagues of shirking their constitutional
    duty.165
    A few years later in District of Columbia v. Heller,166 which struck down D.C.’s ban on
    handguns and operable long guns, the Court divided on what measure of deference was appropriate
    in the Second Amendment context. In dissent, Justice Stevens lauded New Deal-era Justice
    Frankfurter and accused the Court of aggressive activism, chastising, “adherence to a policy of
    judicial restraint would be far wiser than the bold decision announced today.”167
    I would not have Texas judges condone government’s dreamed-up justifications (or dream
    up post hoc justifications themselves) for interfering with citizens’ constitutional guarantees. As
    in other constitutional settings, we should be neutral arbiters, not bend-over-backwards advocates
    for the government. Texas judges weighing state constitutional challenges should scrutinize
    government’s actual justifications for a law—what policymakers really had in mind at the time,
    not something they dreamed up after litigation erupted. And judges should not be obliged to
    concoct speculative or far-fetched rationalizations to save the government’s case.
    162
    
    Id. at 469.
           163
    
    Id. at 488.
           164
    
    Id. at 483.
           165
    
    Id. at 494
    (O’Connor, J., dissenting).
    166
    
    554 U.S. 570
    (2008).
    167
    
    Id. at 680
    n.39 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
    36
    3. Texas courts need not turn a blind eye to the self-evident reasons why an increasing
    number of Texans need a government permission slip to work in their chosen field.
    Today’s decision recognizes another key contributor to the irrationalities afflicting
    occupational licensing: the hard-wired inclination to reduce competition. This metabolic
    impulse—Human Nature 101—has always existed.
    English courts protected the right to earn a living since the early Seventeenth Century, long
    before the U.S. Constitution was adopted. In 1614, the Court of King’s Bench invalidated a law
    that required an apprenticeship with the local guild before someone could become an upholsterer,
    dismissing the cries of licensed upholsterers who warned of inexpert practitioners. Lord Chief
    Justice Coke, Britain’s highest judicial officer, was unpersuaded, holding “no skill” was required,
    “for [someone] may well learn this in seven hours.”168 Lord Coke wrote that Magna Carta (now
    800 years old) and English common law safeguarded the right of “any man to use any trade thereby
    to maintain himself and his family.”169 He compared the proponents of barriers, invariably
    incumbent businesses, to someone rowing a boat: “they look one way and row another: they
    pretend public profit, intend private.”170 That is, they speak of public welfare (increasing
    competence) but seek private welfare (decreasing competition). Guilds in England wielded
    licensing to create “artificial scarcity,” prompting English courts to declare the right to earn a living
    one of “nationalistic concern for increasing the wealth of the realm.”171 Lord Coke said legal
    redress, not licensing, was preferred for most occupations, explaining the “possibility that a
    
    168 Allen v
    . Tooley, (1613) 80 Eng. Rep. 1055 (K.B.) 1057; 2 Bulstrode 186, 189.
    169
    
    Id. at 1055.
            170
    R.H. COASE, The Lighthouse in Economics (1974), in THE FIRM, THE MARKET, AND THE LAW 187, 196
    (1988) (quoting Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke) (spelling modernized).
    171
    SANDEFUR, supra note 24, at 23.
    37
    practitioner might do a bad job was not a good excuse for restricting economic freedom, raising
    costs to consumers, and depriving entrepreneurs of economic opportunity.”172
    Adam Smith echoed Coke a century and a half later in The Wealth of Nations, calling
    efforts to thwart people from exercising their dexterity and industry as they wish “a plain violation
    of this most sacred property.”173 Economic freedom was indeed prized in the colonies, which
    lacked a guild system, but the right was extolled less as a national wealth creator and more as
    man’s natural birthright. In 1775, Thomas Jefferson previewed a principle he would underscore in
    the Declaration—the right to pursue happiness174—lamenting British laws that “prohibit us from
    manufacturing, for our own use, the articles we raise on our own lands, with our own labour.”175
    Like what? Colonists were forbidden from making iron tools. Why? To enrich British toolmakers.
    Colonists were forbidden from making their own hats from the fur of American animals. Why? To
    enrich British hatmakers. Adam Smith, who considered economic choice “the most sacred and
    inviolable of rights,” likewise observed the tendency of trades to raise wages by reducing the
    supply of skilled craftsmen.176
    172
    
    Id. 173 ADAM
    SMITH, AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS 122 (Edwin
    Cannon, ed., Random House 1937).
    174
    Jefferson echoed phrasing from the Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by Jefferson’s friend George
    Mason just one month before Jefferson’s masterpiece was issued, who extolled “the enjoyment of life and liberty,
    with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” See Va.
    Declaration of Rights § 2 (1776), in 1 BERNARD SCHWARTZ, THE BILL OF RIGHTS: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY 234–
    35 (1971).
    175
    THOMAS JEFFERSON, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), in THE JEFFERSONIAN
    ENCYCLOPEDIA 963, 964 (John P. Foley ed., Funk & Wagnalls Co. 1900).
    176
    SMITH, supra note 173, at 121–22.
    38
    What is past is indeed prologue.177 Fast forward almost 250 years, and a prized taxi
    medallion in New York City now costs $1.25 million, quadruple the price of just a decade ago.178
    But the unalienable right to pursue happiness is not merely the right to possess things or to
    participate in activities we enjoy; it necessarily includes the right to improve our lot in life through
    industry and ingenuity.
    A raft of modern research by Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker and various
    social scientists confirms that practitioners desire to stifle would-be competitors.179 In 2013, the
    Texas House Committee on Government Efficiency and Reform found this anticompetitive
    impulse alive and well in Texas, where licensure affords “clear advantages to members of the
    licensed profession, such as reduced competition and increased earnings.”180 The Committee
    observed that stiffer occupational regulations rarely originate with consumer and consumer
    advocacy groups; rather, they are pushed by entrenched industry members to secure “less
    competition, improved job security, and greater profitability.”181 The Committee, recognizing the
    myriad harms of occupational overregulation—measured in damage to “job growth and consumer
    choice”182—and fearing that Texas was headed towards “more, large-scale occupational licensing
    programs,”183 made this recommendation: “The Legislature should implement a process to review
    177
    See WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, THE TEMPEST act 2, sc. 1.
    178
    Matt Flegenheimer, $1 Medallions Stifling the Dreams of Cabdrivers, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 14, 2013, at A24.
    179
    Gary S. Becker, A Theory of Competition Among Pressure Groups for Political Influence, Q. J. ECON.,
    371–400 (1983).
    180
    INTERIM REPORT, supra note 51, at 59.
    181
    
    Id. 182 Id.
            183
    
    Id. at 60.
    39
    proposals to regulate new occupations, as well as existing licensing programs, based on real and
    documented harm to the public.”184
    The Legislature responded by passing House Bill 86, which creates a mechanism to
    critically examine whether existing occupational regulations are still needed, and to phase out
    those deemed unnecessary. Specifically, the new law requires the Sunset Advisory Commission,
    in assessing “an agency that licenses an occupation or profession,” to probe whether, and how,
    existing occupational regulations actually serve the public interest. 185 The new law also allows a
    legislator to submit to the Commission for review and analysis any proposed legislation that would
    create a new or significantly modify an existing occupational licensing program.186
    Courts need not be oblivious to the iron political and economic truth that the regulatory
    environment is littered with rent-seeking by special-interest factions who crave the exclusive,
    state-protected right to pursue their careers. Again, smart regulations are indispensable, but
    184
    
    Id. at 62.
             185
    TEX. GOV’T CODE § 325.0115(b). The Commission is required to assess:
    (1) whether the occupational licensing program:
    (A) serves a meaningful, defined public interest; and
    (B) provides the least restrictive form of regulation that will adequately protect the public
    interest;
    (2) the extent to which the regulatory objective of the occupational licensing program may be
    achieved through market forces, private or industry certification and accreditation programs, or
    enforcement of other law;
    (3) the extent to which licensing criteria, if applicable, ensure that applicants have occupational
    skill sets or competencies that correlate with a public interest and the impact that those criteria
    have on applicants, particularly those with moderate or low incomes, seeking to enter the
    occupation or profession; and
    (4) the impact of the regulation, including the extent to which the program stimulates or restricts
    competition and affects consumer choice and the cost of services. 
    Id. at §
    325(b)(1)-(4).
    186
    The new law authorizes the Commission’s chair to deny such a request for review on the recommendation
    of the executive director. The bill requires the Commission to report its review findings to the Legislature before the
    start of the next legislative session. The bill also requires the Commission, in analyzing legislation proposing the
    creation of an occupational licensing program, to determine whether the unregulated practice of the occupation would
    be inconsistent with the public interest, whether the public can reasonably be expected to benefit from an assurance
    of initial and continuing professional skill sets or competencies, and whether the public can be more effectively
    protected by means other than state regulation. 
    Id. § 325.023(c)(1)–(3).
    40
    nonsensical regulations inflict multiple burdens—on consumers (who pay more for goods and
    services, or try to do the work themselves),187 on would-be entrepreneurs (who find market entry
    formidable, if not impossible), on lower-income workers (who can’t break into entry-level trades),
    and on the wider public (who endure crimped economic growth while enjoying no tangible benefit
    whatsoever).188
    IV.
    In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the
    example . . . of charters of power granted by liberty.189
    The Founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honors to birth a new type of
    nation—one with a radical design: three separate, co-equal, and competing branches. Three rival
    branches deriving power from three unrivaled words: “We the People.” Both the Texas and federal
    Constitutions presume the branches will be structural adversaries—that legislators, for example,
    will jealously guard their lawmaking prerogative if the executive begins aggrandizing power.
    Indeed, inter-branch political competition is a precondition to advancing inter-firm economic
    competition—that is, the judicial branch asserting judicial power to ensure that the political
    branches don’t arbitrarily insulate established practitioners from newcomers.
    187
    HOWARD BAETJER, JR., FREE OUR MARKETS—A CITIZENS’ GUIDE TO ESSENTIAL ECONOMICS 95–96
    (2013).
    188
    KLEINER, LICENSING OCCUPATIONS, supra note 57, at 53.
    James Madison, Charters (Jan. 19, 1792), in JAMES MADISON—WRITINGS 733, 736 (Jack N. Rakove ed.,
    189
    1999). See also 1 JAMES WILSON, Of the Study of the Law in the United States, in THE WORKS OF JAMES WILSON:
    ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT, AND PROFESSOR OF LAW IN THE COLLEGE OF PHILADELPHIA 1, 6–7
    (James De Witt Andrews ed., Callaghan & Co. 1895) (“Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes
    oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.”).
    41
    Madison, lead architect of the U.S. Constitution, saw his bedrock constitutional mission as
    ensuring that America does not “convert a limited into an unlimited Govt.”190 Enlightenment
    philosopher Montesquieu likewise warned of power concentrated: “When the legislative and
    executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be
    no liberty.”191 Madison paid homage to “the celebrated Montesquieu” in Federalist 10, which gave
    voice to Madison’s gravest worry: the risk of runaway majorities trampling individual liberty.192
    Madison turned 85 on the day delegates adopted the Constitution of the Republic of Texas. “He
    lived barely 100 days more, just long enough to see Texas free.”193 And just like Madison’s
    handiwork, the Texas Constitution—then and today—exists to secure liberty.
    A.
    As mentioned earlier, the term “judicial activism” is a legal Rorschach test. I oppose
    judicial activism, inventing rights not rooted in the law. But the opposite extreme, judicial
    passivism, is corrosive, too—judges who, while not activist, are not active in preserving the
    liberties, and the limits, our Framers actually enshrined. The Texas Constitution is irrefutably
    framed in proscription, imposing unsubtle and unmistakable limits on government power. It
    models the federal Constitution in a fundamental way: dividing government power so that each
    branch checks and balances the others. But as we recently observed, “the Texas Constitution takes
    Madison a step further by including, unlike the federal Constitution, an explicit Separation of
    190
    James Madison, Letter to Spencer Roane (Sept. 2, 1819), in JAMES MADISON: WRITINGS, supra note 189,
    at 736.
    191
    1 CHARLES DE SECONDAT MONTESQUIEU, THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 181 (1st Amer. from the 5th London ed.
    1802).
    192
    THE FEDERALIST No. 51, at 298 (James Madison) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961) (citing Montesquieu for the
    proposition that the three branches of government, yet intertwined, do not violate the principle of separation of
    powers).
    193
    In re State Bd. for Educator Certification, 
    452 S.W.3d 802
    , 808 n.38 (Tex. 2013).
    42
    Powers provision to curb overreaching and to spur rival branches to guard their prerogatives.”194
    The Texas Constitution constrains government power in another distinctive way: It lacks a
    Necessary and Proper Clause, often invoked to expand Congress’s powers beyond those
    specifically enumerated.195 Moreover, as noted above, it contains a Privileges or Immunities
    Clause that, unlike the federal version, has never been judicially nullified.196
    As judges, we have no business second-guessing policy choices, but when the Constitution
    is at stake, it is not impolite to say “no” to government. Liberties for “We the People” necessarily
    mean limits on “We the Government.” That’s the very reason constitutions are written: to stop
    government abuses, not to ratify them. Our supreme duty to our dual constitutions and to their
    shared purpose—to “secure the Blessings of Liberty”197—requires us to check constitutionally
    verboten actions, not rubber-stamp them under the banner of majoritarianism. For people to live
    their lives as they see fit, a government of limited powers must exercise that power not with force
    but with reason. And an independent judiciary must judge government actions, not merely
    rationalize them. Judicial restraint doesn’t require courts to ignore the nonrestraint of the other
    branches, not when their actions imperil the constitutional liberties of people increasingly
    hamstrung in their enjoyment of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”198
    194
    
    Id. at 808
    n.39 (citing TEX. CONST. art. II, § 1).
    195
    U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 18.
    196
    See supra notes 40, 86, and 146, and accompanying text.
    197
    U.S. CONST. pmbl. See also TEX. CONST. art. I (declaring its utmost mission to safeguard “the general,
    great and essential principles of liberty and free government”).
    198
    THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE para. 2 (U.S. 1776) (underscoring that governments are “instituted
    among Men” in order to “secure” our “unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
    Happiness”).
    43
    The power to “protect the public” is a heady and fearsome one.199 Government is charged
    with promoting the general welfare, but it must always act within constitutional constraints. Our
    two constitutions exist to advance two purposes: individual liberty through limited government.
    Our federal and state Founders saw liberty as America’s natural, foundational value, and our rights
    as too numerous to be exhaustively listed. Liberty both justifies government (to erect basic civic
    guardrails) and limits government (to minimize abridgements on human freedom). In other words,
    our dual constitutional charters exist not to exalt majority rule but to protect prepolitical rights that
    limit majority rule. Majoritarianism cannot be permitted to invert our bottom-line constitutional
    premise. The might of the majority, whatever the vote count, cannot trample individuals’ rights
    recognized in both our federal and state Constitutions, not to mention in our nation’s first law, the
    Declaration.200
    B.
    Our State Constitution, like Madison’s Federal handiwork, is infused with
    Newtonian genius: three rival branches locked in synchronous orbit by competing
    interests—ambition checking ambition.201
    Isaac Newton died in 1727, before James Madison, the Father of the U.S. Constitution, was
    even born, but our Founders, both state and federal, understood political physics: “power seized
    199
    See, supra notes 12–18 (discussing Buck v. Bell, 
    274 U.S. 200
    (1927), which upheld forcible sterilization
    of the “feeble-minded”).
    200
    Congress placed the Declaration of Independence at the outset—page 1, volume 1—of the United States
    Code, under this heading: “Organic Laws of the United States of America.” Lincoln describes the Declaration of
    Independence as a lens through which just laws become clear—as the framework for interpreting the law—when he
    calls the Declaration an “apple of gold,” and the Constitution the “frame of silver” around it. ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
    Fragment on the Constitution and the Union (Jan. 1861), in 4 THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 169
    (Roy P. Basler ed., 1953). The Constitution, indeed all laws, must not be considered independently of the ultimate
    purpose for which they are designed: not to unhinge democracy, but to secure liberty.
    201
    In re State Bd. for Educator Certification, 
    452 S.W.3d 802
    , 808 (2014).
    44
    by one branch necessarily means power ceded by another.”202 Newton’s Third Law of Motion,
    while a physical law, also operates as a political law. When one branch of government exerts a
    force, there occurs an equal and opposite counterforce. The Laws of Constitutional Motion require
    these rival branches to stay within their sphere, flexing competing forces so that power is neither
    seized nor ceded.
    Our Framers understood that government was inclined to advance its own interests, even
    to the point of ham-fisted bullying, which is precisely why the Constitution was written—to keep
    government on a leash, not We the People. But individual liberty pays the price when our ingenious
    system of checks and balances sputters, including when the judiciary subordinates liberty to the
    congeries of group interests that dictate majoritarian outcomes. Daily and undeniably, there exist
    government incursions that siphon what Thomas Jefferson called our “due degree of liberty”203—
    “siphoning that often occurs subtly, with such drop-by-drop gentleness as to be imperceptible.”204
    Police power is undoubtedly an attribute of state sovereignty, but sovereignty ultimately
    resides in “the people of the State of Texas.”205 The Texas Constitution limits government
    encroachments, and does so on purpose. “Our Bill of Rights is not mere hortatory fluff; it is a
    202
    
    Id. 203 Letter
    from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Paris (1787), in THE JEFFERSONIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA: A
    COMPREHENSIVE COLLECTION OF THE VIEWS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 277 (John P. Foley ed., 1900). See also Edmund
    Burke, Speech on Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies, Mar. 22, 1775, in EDMUND BURKE:
    SELECTED WRITINGS AND SPEECHES 147, 158 (Peter J. Stanlis ed., Doubleday & Co. 1968) (‘‘In this character of the
    Americans a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole: and as an ardent
    is always a jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable, whenever they see the least
    attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living
    for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies, probably, than in any other people of the earth . . .”).
    204
    Robinson v. Crown Cork & Seal, Inc., 
    335 S.W.3d 126
    , 165 (Tex. 2010) (Willett, J., concurring). Or, as
    18th-century philosopher David Hume cautioned, “It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Rather,
    suppression “must steal in upon [people] by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be
    received.” DAVID HUME, OF THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS (1741), in David HUME: POLITICAL ESSAYS 3 n.4 (Knud
    Haakonssen ed., 1994).
    205
    TEX. CONST. pmbl.
    45
    purposeful check on government power.”206 And everyday Texans, and the courts that serve them,
    must remain vigilant. Government will always insist it is acting for the public’s greater good, but
    as Justice Brandeis warned in his now-celebrated Olmstead dissent: “Experience should teach us
    to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.”207
    Before solving a problem, you must first define it. The Lone Star State boasts a spirit of
    daring and rugged independence, virtues essential to personal and economic dynamism, but
    bureaucratic headwinds imperil that vitality. Almost two centuries ago, around the time of Texas
    independence, Alexis de Tocqueville, a keen observer of early America, warned of “soft
    despotism” wrought by government that “covers the surface of society with a network of small
    complicated rules” that “even the most original and energetic characters cannot penetrate.”208
    Tocqueville’s warnings for 1835 America apply equally to 2015 Texas, where “administrative
    despotism,” though doubtless well meaning, inflicts a real-world toll on honest, hardworking
    Texans:
    The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom
    forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power
    does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses,
    enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing
    better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which government is the
    shepherd.209
    Government’s conception of its own power as limitless is hard-wired. But under the Texas
    Constitution, government may only pursue constitutionally permissible ends. Naked economic
    206
    
    Robinson, 335 S.W.3d at 164
    (Willett, J., concurring).
    207
    Olmstead v. United States, 
    277 U.S. 438
    , 479 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting), overruled by Katz v. United
    States, 
    389 U.S. 347
    (1967).
    208
    ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 319 (P. Bradley ed.1994).
    209
    
    Id. 46 protectionism,
    strangling hopes and dreams with bureaucratic red tape, is not one of them. And
    such barriers, often stemming from interest-group politics, are often insurmountable for Texans on
    the lower rungs of the economic ladder (who unsurprisingly lack political power)—not to mention
    the harm inflicted on consumers deprived of the fruits of industrious entrepreneurs. Irrational
    licensing laws oppress hard-working Texans of modest means, men and women struggling to do
    what Texans of all generations have done: to better their families through honest enterprise.210
    V.
    [W]hile baseball may be the national pastime of the citizenry, dishing out special
    economic benefits to certain in-state industries remains the favored pastime of state
    and local governments.211
    Governments are “instituted among Men” to “secure” preexisting, “unalienable Rights.”212
    Our federal and Texas Constitutions are charters of liberty, not wellsprings of boundless
    government power. Madison adroitly divided political power because he prized a “We the People”
    system that extolled citizens over a monarchical system of rulers and subjects. The trick was to
    give government its requisite powers while structurally hemming in that power so that fallible men
    wouldn’t become as despotic as the hereditary monarchs they had fled and fought.
    Economic liberty is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,”213 and the right
    to engage in productive enterprise is as central to individual freedom as the right to worship as one
    chooses. Indeed, Madison declared that “protection” of citizens’ “faculties of acquiring property”
    210
    To the degree that “footnote four” of Carolene Products says “discrete and insular minorities” in the
    political arena deserve special judicial protection, it is tough to imagine a group more disadvantaged by the
    majoritarian political process than would-be entrepreneurs denied their calling by Byzantine, State-enforced barriers
    enacted at the behest of entrenched, politically powerful interests.
    211
    Powers v. Harris, 
    379 F.3d 1208
    , 1221 (10th Cir. 2004).
    212
    THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE para. 2 (U.S. 1776).
    213
    Washington v. Glucksberg, 
    521 U.S. 702
    , 703 (1997).
    47
    is the “first object of government,”214 and admonished that a government whose “arbitrary
    restrictions” deny citizens “free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations” was
    “not a just government.”215 When it comes to occupational licensing—often less about protecting
    the public than about bestowing special privileges on political favorites—government power has
    expanded unchecked. But government doesn’t get to determine the reach of its own power,
    something that subverts the original constitutional design of limited government. The Texas
    Constitution imposes limits, and imposes them intentionally.216 Bottom line: Police power cannot
    go unpoliced.
    I believe judicial passivity is incompatible with individual liberty and constitutionally
    limited government. Occupational freedom, the right to earn a living as one chooses, is a nontrivial
    constitutional right entitled to nontrivial judicial protection. People are owed liberty by virtue of
    their very humanity—“endowed by their Creator,” as the Declaration affirms.217 And while
    government has undeniable authority to regulate economic activities to protect the public against
    fraud and danger, freedom should be the general rule, and restraint the exception.
    The Founders understood that a “limited Constitution” can be preserved “no other way than
    through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the
    manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or
    214
    THE FEDERALIST No. 10, at 78 (James Madison) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961).
    215
    MADISON, Property (Mar. 29, 1792), in JAMES MADISON: WRITINGS, supra note 189, at 516. The author
    of the Declaration agreed: “[E]very one has a natural right to choose that [vocation] which he thinks most likely to
    give him comfortable subsistence.” THOMAS JEFFERSON, THOUGHTS ON LOTTERIES (1826), in THE JEFFERSONIAN
    ENCYCLOPEDIA 609 (John P. Foley ed., Funk & Wagnalls Co. 1900).
    216
    As discussed above, see supra notes 194–96 and accompanying text, the Texas Constitution does not
    mirror exactly the U.S. Constitution, and our Privileges or Immunities Clause, best I can tell, is alive and well, unlike
    its federal counterpart.
    217
    THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE para. 2 (U.S. 1776).
    48
    privileges would amount to nothing.”218 Judicial duty—“so arduous a duty,” Hamilton called it—
    requires courts to be “bulwarks of a limited Constitution against legislative encroachments,”219
    including holding irrational anticompetitive actions unconstitutional. Such is life in a constitutional
    republic, which exalts constitutionalism over majoritarianism precisely in order to tell government
    “no.” That’s the paramount point, to tap the brakes rather than punch the gas.
    The Court today rejects servility in the economic-liberty realm, fortifying protections for
    Texans seeking what Texans have always sought: a better life for themselves and their families.
    There remains, as Davy Crockett excitedly wrote his children, “a world of country to settle.”220
    __________________________________________
    Don R. Willett
    Justice
    OPINION DELIVERED: June 26, 2015
    218
    THE FEDERALIST NO. 78, at 466 (Alexander Hamilton) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961).
    219
    
    Id. at 469.
              220
    Letter from David Crockett to his children (Jan. 9, 1836), in H.W. BRANDS, LONE STAR NATION 332
    (2004).
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