OKLAHOMA CITY—Today, a Hughes County small business filed a lawsuit challenging an Oklahoma law that arbitrarily restricts who can and cannot sell caskets in the state. Caskets of Honor owners Candi Mentink and her husband Todd Collard have partnered with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to file the lawsuit, which seeks to strike down a law requiring those who sell caskets in Oklahoma to obtain a costly, unrelated funeral director license.
“At the end of the day, a casket is just a box. It serves no health or safety purpose,” said IJ Attorney Matt Liles. “You shouldn’t need to spend years studying unrelated topics just to sell a box.”
Caskets of Honor sells custom-wrapped caskets to individuals or funeral homes who reach out to them. Candi and Todd buy the casket wholesale and then wrap it with a vinyl design at their shop in Calvin. Wraps include religious symbols, patriotic patterns, the logos of local sports teams, hunting and fishing themes, and much more.
For years, Candi and Todd operated their business with no issue. But in 2021, the Oklahoma Funeral Board conducted a sting operation after learning Caskets of Honor had a booth displaying samples of their wrapped caskets at the Tulsa State Fair. A Board investigator posed as a regular person who had a father in hospice who was a veteran of the U.S. Army Cavalry. Todd told the man he could “put a Cavalry emblem on the casket” and turn it around in “about 48 hours.” Because Candi and Todd were selling caskets to the public without a funeral director’s license, the Funeral Board punished them. The board launched an administrative proceeding against Candi and Todd, resulting in a $4,000 fine and a $700 payment for the board’s costs. The Board also required them to stop marketing their business to the public and sell only to funeral homes, not individual customers.
“We were completely shocked to learn that what we were doing was somehow illegal,” said Candi. “We never would’ve thought we needed a funeral director license to do work that isn’t even similar to the work a funeral director does. All we do is create custom wrappings for our clients.”
Current law requires any Oklahoman who wants to sell caskets to customers in the state to obtain a funeral director or embalmer license. In order to obtain a license, one must take two years of classes on mortuary science, get a grade of 75 percent on two tests that have nothing to do with building caskets, do a one-year apprenticeship, and pay various fees. And any Oklahoma business that wants to sell caskets to the public must become a licensed funeral home—even businesses like Caskets of Honor, which don’t offer any funeral or embalming services and don’t have any funeral facilities.
All of these restrictions on who can sell caskets become more absurd when one considers that Oklahoma doesn’t prescribe standards for caskets. One can lawfully be buried in a cardboard box, a cloth shroud, or nothing at all.
“It is absurd that someone from Kentucky, New York, Uganda, or Norway can legally buy a casket from Candi and Todd, but their fellow Sooners cannot,” said IJ Senior Attorney Renée Flaherty. “We hope this lawsuit will allow Candi and Todd to start earning an honest living again and will provide their customers with the options they’d like at the end of life.”
IJ is the nation’s leader defending people’s rights to earn an honest living free from irrational government regulations. In addition to the new case in Oklahoma, IJ has defeated similar restrictions on the ability of people to sell caskets in Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee.