A federal district judge sitting in Harrisburg has thrown out decades-old state regulations governing Pennsylvania funeral homes, saying they held down competition while substantially boosting costs. Judge John E. Jones III, ruling in a four-year-old lawsuit that a York-area funeral director and others brought against individual members of the Pennsylvania State Board of Funeral Directors, essentially endorsed the plaintiffs’ allegations that regulators walled the funeral business off from competition by restricting the entry of out-of-state operators, imposed rules that made it difficult for funeral homes to operate efficiently, and even went so far as to improperly impose restrictions on funeral home names.
