Daniel Radcliffe Gets To Be an Auctioneer, Thanks to Licensing Reform

New York City no longer requires a permission slip to sell to the highest bidder.

The Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along has attracted rave reviews and rewritten the musical's former status as a commercial flop. But without some recent changes to New York City licensing laws, the performance I saw could have triggered huge fines for the show's star, Daniel Radcliffe.

In the last few months of the year, casts often raise money after the final curtain call for Broadway Cares, an AIDS charity. After the show I attended in late October, this took the surprising form of an auction. Radcliffe, the former Harry Potter star and the new Merrily lead, returned to the stage and prompted audience members to place dozens of live bids for a signed prop from the musical's off-Broadway run. The winner paid $1,600.

Until last year, that simple bit of fundraising would have been illegal without a special permission slip from the city's government. Without an auctioneer's license, he would have faced fines of hundreds of dollars.

New York City no longer licenses auctioneers, thanks to Local Law 80, which took effect in June 2022. The law repealed many restrictions on small businesses, including not just the mandatory licensing for auctioneers (in place since the 1980s) but licenses for amusement arcades and laundries.

Auctioneering still requires a license in 27 states and the District of Columbia (alongside countless municipalities). According to License to Work, a nationwide report by my employer, the public interest law firm the Institute for Justice, it can cost up to $800 in fees and more than a year of unpaid apprenticeship experience and coursework to secure one of those licenses. Since 2017, nine states have doubled down by increasing the cost, time, or other burdens for aspiring auctioneers.

That's just one of many professions where licensing requirements can be both nonsensical and extreme. The Institute for Justice study reviewed 102 blue-collar and/or lower-income occupations and found that these permission slips to work require, on average, nearly a year of education and experience, at least one exam, and $295 in fees. That's a lot of time and money spent earning a license instead of earning a living, especially for lower-income workers—and that doesn't include hidden costs, such as tuition for the required schooling.

Many jobs that pose little risk require a lot of training. Indeed, 71 occupations in the study require more training than entry-level emergency medical technicians. On average, EMTs need about 36 days' worth of training, as opposed to 342 days for cosmetologists. And 88 percent of the occupations included in the report are unlicensed by at least one state—and 14 have been delicensed by at least one state—suggesting these jobs can be done safely without a license.

Proponents of licensing say it's necessary to protect consumers. But even the fiercest defenders of NYC's former auctioneering regime acknowledge that no similar regulations exist in comparable cities such as London or Hong Kong. And the end of New York's auctioneering licensing scheme did not usher in chaos. A spokesperson for Christie's, one of the industry's leaders, told The Art Newspaper last year that the auction house maintains its own ethical standards and would simply "continue to operate as we have been." If there are already adequate private sector norms and ethical standards, there's no need for a government licensing scheme.

Plenty of other laws already govern sales transactions, guarding against fraud. Licensing has little to do with protecting consumers; instead, it mostly shields existing businesses from competition by blocking new entrants to the market.

Merrily is about the obstacles people face on the long road to success. That road is even longer and bumpier when the government adds extra challenges. Thankfully, New Yorkers—and visiting Brits, like Radcliffe—are now free to conduct auctions like Merrily's fundraiser without fear of government retribution.