Monks Battle Funeral Industry Regulators to Sell Caskets

When St. Joseph Abbey decided to open a woodshop on All Saints Day 2007 to sell handcrafted caskets to the public, the hope was that the sales would pay for the medical and educational needs of 36 Benedictine monks.

The board regulating Louisiana's embalmers and funeral directors, though, would have none of it. Before a single casket was sold, it mailed the monks a cease-and-desist letter, citing a state statute that carried thousands of dollars in fines and up to 180 days in prison for anyone selling funeral boxes without first paying the fees and meeting the requirements necessary to get a license from them.

On Thursday, the 121-year-old abbey fired back with a document of its own: a lawsuit asking a federal judge to strike that law down.

"We need the income ... from the caskets to survive," said Abbot Justin Brown, the head of the abbey, during a news conference outside U.S. District Court in New Orleans, where the suit was filed. Mark Coudrain, the woodshop's director, said, "We just want to do our work without the threat of prison time."

Monks at St. Joseph Abbey, which is near Covington, began making simple wooden caskets and burying their dead brothers in them decades ago. Lay people became interested in buying them from the Benedictines after the funerals of Bishop Stanley Ott of Baton Rouge in November 1992 and Bishop Warren Boudreaux of Houma-Thibodeaux in 1997, both of whom were buried in Abbey-crafted coffins.

Ten years after Boudreaux's funeral, Coudrain, a trained woodworker, became a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. He quit a career as president and general manager of WLAE-TV and built St. Joseph's Woodworks, which crafted simple cypress caskets priced at $1,500 for monk's funerals or $2,000 for the general public, and housed them free of charge.

When purchased from a traditional funeral home caskets cost more in general. According to market data, in 2007, casket prices nationwide averaged $2,255 and could climb to more than $10,000. It is lucrative business for the 400 licensed establishments in Louisiana, which handle about 40,000 funerals a year and typically charge to store the coffins until customers need them.

Complaints about the monks' operation surfaced. The cease-and-desist order from the Louisiana Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors was followed by a formal complaint to the board from Mothe Funeral Home, which argued that the Abbey's "illegal third-party casket sales place funeral homes in an unfavorable position with families."

According to Louisiana law, no one at the abbey can sell any "receptacles ... where human remains are ... placed for disposition" without paying an application fee, taking classes, passing an exam and serving an apprenticeship that is a "primary form of employment" to earn a funeral director's license.

The monks would then need to redesign the Abbey into a traditional funeral parlor equipped with embalming equipment and staffed by embalmers licensed by the state regulatory board, whose members are Paul "Wes" Castille, Oscar Rollins, Belva Pichon, Craig Gill, Andrew Hayes, Wall McKneely, Margaret Shehee, Kelly Rush Williams and Louis Charbonnet, all named as defendants in the monks' suit.

Brown said satisfying their standards is not feasible. The abbey does not receive money from the Catholic church. For income, it relies on the sales of trees from a forest on the property, plus items the monks craft by hand. The Abbey has so far defied the regulators' warning, sold about 50 caskets and petitioned state legislators for help.

A state representative in 2008 introduced a bill amending the law to permit non-licensed funeral directors to sell caskets. This spring, a state senator attempted to sponsor a bill that would exempt the monks from the licensing requirement. Both measures were defeated after funeral directors and industry lobbyists opposed it.

The Institute for Justice in Virginia then took up the monks' cause and prepared a lawsuit, arguing that the state law violates the 14th Amendment clauses of due process, privileges or immunities, and equal protection.

Jeffrey Rowes, the group's senior attorney, said, "The state is trying to require them to abandon their calling as Benedictine monks. ... They want to sell wood boxes, not become funeral directors."

Michael Rasch, the board's Metairie-based attorney, countered, "The board does not create the law. The state Legislature does. Each board member swears to enforce the law, and that's what they are doing." He declined further comment, saying he preferred to argue the matter "in court, not through the press."

The suit, which does not seek financial compensation, alleges that the funeral-director and funeral-establishment licensing laws are meant to establish and preserve a "cartel for the sale of caskets within Louisiana."

All but one of the members of the Louisiana Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors is a licensed funeral home director and embalmer, a situation the suit portrays as "anti-competitive," especially since "a casket is not required for burial in any state in the country ... (and) does not serve any public health and safety purpose."

"It is outrageous," Rowes said. "This cannot be the state of the law for a country that so values economic freedom."

Rowes believes in the suit's chances for success but thinks the U.S. Supreme Court will have to settle the matter for good. Two federal courts of appeal covering different parts of the country have ruled that governments cannot enrich private interests by restricting competition. A third one disagreed, though, determining that legislatures were free to favor certain groups economically.

Members of St. Joseph Abbey on Thursday said something much more crucial is at stake for them.

"Right now I'm not being able to follow my vocation," Coudrain said.

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