Florida had one of the most restrictive laws in the country on interior design with both practice and title acts restricting who can call themselves an interior designer (the title part) and who can practice interior design (the practice part). But this week a Florida Judge struck it down! Hopefully this finding will stick on appeal. As one state affects another, I am hopeful that this causes a ripple throughout our nation.
Thanks to Patty Morrow and the folks at the Interior Design Protection Council for their hard work.
From the Interior Design Protection Council: "On February 4th, Judge Robert Hinkle issued a ruling on the Institute for Justice’s legal challenge to Florida’s restrictive, anti-competitive, and unconstitutional interior design law. His decision will benefit the Florida design community in TWO very important ways:
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1. TITLE The statute barring a person who provides lawful, interior-design services without a license from advertising [him]herself as an “interior designer” violates the First Amendment. Accordingly, it is declared that § 481.223(1)(c) and the proviso in § 481.229(6)(a) prohibiting advertising or representing oneself as an interior designer are unconstitutional. You are now permanently and legally able to use the title or to otherwise market yourself as “Interior Designer” and to use terms such as “interior design,” “space planning,” and any other term that accurately describes work you are lawfully performing without restraint or fear of prosecution.
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2. PRACTICE In his written decision, Judge Hinkle proclaims that the statue “is not a model of clarity.” In order to save the practice act from the “substantial constitutional issues” it would otherwise raise, both Judge Hinkle and the BOAID significantly narrowed the meaning of the term “interior design” as it is normally understood (and as it had been interpreted by the Board before the legal challenge). Although it is still far from clear exactly what “interior design” under the law is as reinterpreted in the judge’s legal ruling, the BOAID has been forced to substantially limit its definition of interior design and to (apparently) admit that anything that could be construed as “interior decorator services” in a commercial setting (and this would include the specification of and floor plans depicting ALL “surface materials, window treatments, wallcoverings, paint, floor coverings, surface-mounted lighting, surface-mounted fixtures, and loose furnishings not subject to regulation under applicable building codes) & may now be done by nonlicensees. According to the judge’s ruling, the only thing that remains covered by the practice act is “an unlicensed person from providing design services to a client relating to nonstructural interior elements of a nonresidential building or structure.” A key question that will have to be clarified is exactly what constitute the “nonstructural interior elements” of a building, but Judge Hinkle’s ruling makes clear that it does NOT include loose furniture and probably does NOT include such things as lighting, window treatments, wallcoverings, floor coverings, and other similar items."
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Read the judge's complete finding here.
