Small Business

This Social Worker Wants To Help Kids With Special Needs. Louisiana Won't Let Her.

The state requires that people prove certain businesses are needed. How to do that is another question entirely.

John Stossel | 6.3.2026 12:25 PM

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Is your business "needed"?

Bizarrely, in many states, if you want to start a business, you first must convince bureaucrats that your business is "needed."

Four years ago, Louisiana blocked social worker Ursula Newell-Davis from helping kids with special needs. Bureaucrats said she hadn't proved her business was needed.

"Why does the state of Louisiana have the right to stop me from doing what I love?" she asks in this update video.

Good question. Newell-Davis has a master's degree and a social work license. For two decades, she's helped kids with special needs.

One, Kamal, told us he struggled to make friends, until Newell-Davis "helped teach me how to talk to people."

Kamal's mother is grateful: "She explained to me things that I didn't understand........

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