Masschusetts Elevator Technician

If you are an experienced or licensed elevator technician who wants to get licensed to work in the great state of Massachusetts, you may find the door shut. That is because an unusual law forbids technicians from taking the state licensure test if they completed their apprenticeships under anyone other than a Massachusetts-licensed technician.

It doesn’t matter how many thousands of hours of apprenticeship you completed, how many years of experience you have, or how skilled you are. You have to go back and spend years apprenticing under a Massachusetts-licensed technician if you want to get a license to work in Massachusetts.

This law makes no sense. There’s nothing special about Masschusetts elevators that requires only Massachusetts technicians to teach other technicians. This law doesn’t protect the public from badly maintained elevators; it only works to protect a certain group of elevator technicians from competition, while excluding all other elevator technicians from making a living in Massachusetts.

The state can ensure the public is safe in elevators by requiring you to take an exam, and even to complete an apprenticeship under experienced technicians. But the state has no business making it unreasonably difficult for a skilled technician to make an honest living in Massachusetts.

What Can We Do About It? 

The right to make an honest living is a natural and constitutionally protected right. That means the government is not allowed to make laws that only benefit a small group of workers at the expense of other workers, laws that make no sense, or laws that create such a high barrier to work that perfectly competent and honest people are cut out from the marketplace.

That’s what Massachusetts’s unusual law does, and that’s wrong.  

At the Institute for Justice, we believe that the government should not make it unreasonably difficult for people to make an honest living. As a non-profit civil liberties law firm, the Institute for Justice represents everyday people—free of charge—when the government violates their most important constitutional rights. 

We’re looking for individuals who are licensed or experienced elevator technicians who want to get licensed in Massachusetts but who did not complete an apprenticeship under a Massachusetts-licensed technician, and who want to stand up for their rights.

If you are an elevator technician who is experienced or licensed outside of Massachusetts, or who otherwise has completed an apprenticeship under a technician who was not licensed in Massachusetts, and you want to be licensed in Massachusetts, we want to hear from you through the form on this page. 

Together, we can challenge this unreasonable law and create greater opportunity and freedom for everyone.