EXCERPTS:
"COVINGTON, La.—Five years ago, Hurricane Katrina gave the Benedictine monks at St. Joseph Abbey a new calling.
After the storm pummeled much of a pine forest they had long relied on for timber and income, the monks hatched a fresh plan: They would hand-craft and sell caskets.
But now, local funeral directors are trying to put a lid on the monks' activities. The state funeral regulatory board, dominated by industry members, is enforcing a Louisiana law that makes it a crime for anyone but a licensed parlor to sell "funeral merchandise." The morticians are serious. Violators such as the monks can land in jail for up to 180 days.
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If found guilty of illegal casket sales, each official would face fines of between $500 and $2,500 per violation, the board warned. The hearing, scheduled for mid-August, was cancelled due to a tropical storm.
By then, the monks had already prepared their own federal lawsuit, citing Louisiana's "casket cartel."
The state funeral board has nine members, eight of whom are funeral industry professionals. The board "really has it in for the abbey," complains Jeff Rowes, senior attorney at The Institute for Justice, an Arlington, Va., libertarian public-interest law firm representing the monks. The law, he says, "is an unconstitutional invasion of the right to earn an honest living."
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Boyd Mothe Jr., a member of the fifth generation of his family to run Mothe Funeral Homes outside New Orleans, says Louisiana's law should remain on the books because licensed directors have the training to sell caskets—transactions he calls "complicated." For instance, he says, "a quarter of America is oversized. I don't even know if the monks know how to make an oversized casket."
