Friday was a big day for the barbers of St. Louis—they're now officially allowed to cut hair after the late-afternoon rush hour. KMOV reports that the Missouri city's Board of Alderman passed a bill that repealed an "outdated and irrational" law dating back eight decades that didn't allow barbershops to stay open past 6:30pm during the week, nor on Sundays or some holidays. Hair salons were exempt from the mandate. Per the Washington Post, the old law was first put into place in the 1940s because members of a mostly white barbers union in the city didn't want Black barbers taking any more of their customers—union members back then typically closed before evening, so clients in need of a haircut would instead visit Black nonunion barbers.
Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard, a longtime cosmetologist who spearheaded the push to repeal the "archaic" law, says some of the holidays that barbers weren't allowed to work on didn't even exist, per FOX 2. St. Louis also wasn't the only city that had this so-called barbershop law, and some still have similar ones on the books, including Cleveland, which mandates barbershops be closed on Sundays. The law in St. Louis hadn't really been enforced in decades, but advocates of the repeal want to make sure it doesn't ever have the chance to rear its head again.
"It's got an ugly history," Jennifer McDonald of the Institute for Justice, which helped work toward the new law, tells the Post. "And so let's make sure that ... this law can never be used to discriminate against or harm a barbershop in the future." The St. Louis mayor is expected to officially revoke the 1940s law after Friday's ordinance repeal. "The city's old law was outdated and irrational," says the Institute for Justice's Tom Solomon, per KMOV. "The passage of [the new bill] ensures that no barbers have to fear being criminally charged simply for cutting hair at a time that works for them and their customers." (More St. Louis stories.)
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