Oklahoma funeral service law rattles local casket business: future remains uncertain

OKLAHOMA CITY- (KOKH) — A bill seeking to change requirements for businesses that provide funeral-related services faces an uncertain future in the capitol.

“The state shouldn’t be running businesses out of the state with these kinds of protectionist laws. Laws designed to protect an industry group from competition and not consumers,” said Meagan Forbes, Senior Legislative Counsel for the Institute for Justice.

But that’s exactly what Forbes says the state has done to one Oklahoma couple’s business, Caskets of Honor, who Forbes has been working with to challenge the law.

In Oklahoma, it’s required that businesses selling caskets and other funeral-related merchandise have to have a funeral director or embalmer’s license. Candi Mentink and her husband, Todd Collard, first learned that a few years ago at the Tulsa State Fair.

“We were actually overwhelmed from how many people had stopped at the booth, I mean there was a line, we were a huge attraction, because no one had ever seen anything like it. And then the funeral board had an investigator come by and told us we had to shut down immediately and moved out,” said Collard.

Collard said a few weeks later, they received an $8,200 fine from the funeral board for displaying the caskets at the fair. In addition to being fined, Mentink said they’ve had to move their business out of the sooner state.

“It was devastating, because we don’t do this for ourselves; we do this for the families of Oklahoma,” Mentink said. “And it’s the people that have approached us after a service or when we deliver a casket, they come up and hug us like they’ve known us for all their lives and they thank us for what they’re doing.”

Apart from how it’s impacted their business, Collard said the law just doesn’t make sense.

“It’s a crazy law that you can buy a casket on Walmart.com, Costco, and they can ship it into Oklahoma, but a resident in Oklahoma cannot sell a casket to another resident,” he said.

FOX 25 reached out to a cosponsor of Senate Bill 1602 but did not hear back. The bill was not heard in the house before the deadline. However, it could be brought back at a later date.