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Rolly: All those silly job licensing rules in Utah — everything from horse massaging to hair braiding to house painting

It is illegal to massage a horse in Utah without a costly and time-consuming massage therapist’s license, but until then-Rep. Frank Pignanelli finally got a bestiality bill passed — after earlier failures and much wrangling — you could have sex with it.

That’s just one of the goofy occupational licensing requirements in Utah, which has the 13th most onerous restrictions for practicing a trade in the nation, according to the Institute for Justice.

Pignanelli successfully made it illegal to have sex with animals in the mid-1990s. The House voted down his first try after a debate in which one legislator said Pignanelli “just doesn’t understand the pressures on the farm in rural Utah.