What used to be known as “memorial societies” came together at a conference in Chicago in 1963 to form a national organization that would speak for local groups on the national stage. The memorial societies—volunteer groups who banded together with the primary purpose of negotiating simple funerals at discount prices with mortuaries who would cooperate with that goal—preceded the national organization. The first, Peoples Memorial Association in Seattle, was formed in 1939 and has over 90,000 members. Our smallest affiliates have fewer than 100 members.
San Francisco labor lawyer Bob Treuhaft and his wife, famed journalist Jessica Mitford (author of The American Way of Death), founded one of our oldest affiliates, the Bay Area Funeral Society. They were also on the founding board that created us in 1963 as the Continental Association of Funeral and Memorial Societies (CAFMS). In those days, the Canadian memorial societies were part of our federation.
CAFMS and its affiliates were instrumental in assisting the Federal Trade Commission during the 1970s in researching and pushing for the Funeral Rule, the first national regulations giving consumers the right to:
- buy only what they want from funeral homes, item by item
- truthful information about legal requirements (which often didn’t exist) so they weren’t forced to buy, say, embalming when it wasn’t legally required
- printed, itemized price lists at the beginning of any arrangements discussion
- the right to price quotes by phone
- the right to buy outside merchandise, such as a casket, from vendors other than the funeral home
The Funeral Rule went into effect in 1984. If you are not already familiar with it, please read the Consumers’ Guide to the Funeral Rule on the FTC website.
FCA contributed testimony to the hearings leading up to the 1994 revision to the Funeral Rule, and to the 1999 hearings preceding what would have been another revision (had not political considerations in government quashed it). The organization has been front and center for FTC and Congressional hearings on funeral-related issues since the early 1990s.
When the American and Canadian funeral societies broke apart in the late 80s/early 90s (largely because national laws diverged, and the union was too large), CAFMS became the Funeral and Memorial Societies of America (FAMSA). We retained that name until 1999, when the board renamed us Funeral Consumers Alliance. Because the commercial funeral industry had appropriated our terminology—setting up bogus “cremation and burial societies” to take advantage of our reputation as nonprofit do-gooders—the organization needed to more clearly identify what it did and whom it served.
OVERVIEW OF SIGNIFICANT EVENTS IN THE PAST TWO DECADES
- In 2005, FCA signed on as a plaintiff to a would-be class action lawsuit against the three largest publicly trade funeral and cemetery chains and the largest casket maker. Those are Service Corporation International (SCI), the Alderwoods Group (since bought by SCI), Stewart Enterprises and Batesville Casket Company. We subsequently settled with Stewart and they are no longer party to the suit. FCA, along with nine individual consumers who bought Batesville caskets through defendant funeral homes, allege violations of antitrust laws that resulted in inflated casket prices and the illegal suppression of price competition from independent, non-funeral-home owned casket dealers. The case was filed in US District Court in Northern California, but was moved to the Court in the Southern District in Houston, Texas.
The top anti-trust law firm in the country, Constantine-Cannon, represents the plaintiffs. There is no cost to FCA, and conversely FCA is not entitled to nor asking for monetary damages, although individual consumer plaintiffs may be entitled to them. We are asking the court to order the illegal behavior to stop.
Executive Director Slocum participated in extensive research, depositions, and testimony in federal court. A series of court hearings has taken place, and the Court has denied class-certification status to Batesville consumers.
The 5th Circuit Court dismissed the case in 2011.
- Past Presidents Lamar Hankins and Gere (pronounced “Jerry”) Fulton worked with the executive director to research the problems in the unregulated body parts trade. Many so-called “tissue banks” have sprung up nationwide, but operate as for-profit companies as compared to the nonprofit, traditional organ donors associations. Numerous high-profile scandals involving the theft of body parts (without family or donor consent) and their sale on the medical market prompted us to urge the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws to amend the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act. The UAGA is the model law most states follow in regulating organ and tissue donation. Despite our correspondence in 2003 and 2004, the Conference failed to update the UAGA to take account of the for-profit trade in body parts.
- In 2009, the discovery of 300 bodies having been dug up at Burr Oak cemetery in Chicago (so the graves could be resold) prompted Congressman Bobby Rush to take action. His staff contacted Slocum in June, 2009, and asked for FCA’s help to draft a bill that would cover the routine, ordinary abuses of consumers by cemeteries, not just the headline-grabbing scandals. Slocum helped draft the bill, and all of FCA’s policy objectives (astonishingly, and to our delight) were included in HR3655. The bill directs the FTC to expand the Funeral Rule to cover cemeteries, crematories, and third-party vendors of funeral merchandise.
Slocum testified before the House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection in July, 2009, and submitted 10 pages of supporting written testimony. At the request of Congressional staff, Slocum submitted six pages of supplemental testimony in January, 2010, to address concerns from religious cemeteries about government regulation.
In May, 2010, the bill faced opposition from the National Catholic Cemetery Conference. The NCCC made spurious claims that the bill would allow the government to regulate sacred “religious practices,” which is not true. The bill merely required all cemeteries – religious and nonprofit included – to abide by minimal standards of consumer price disclosure and freedom of choice in purchasing.
- Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death was published in June, 2011. While not an official publication of FCA, the 512-page exposé and consumer manual draws heavily on the experience gained by executive director Josh Slocum and co-author Lisa Carlson, executive director at FCA from 1996 to 2003. The only book of its kind, Final Rights documents the consumer experience of every facet of the death trade, calls government to task for allowing the funeral industry to regulate itself, and puts consumers’ legal rights in plain English. The appendix includes a chapter on the laws in each state explaining everything from how to file a death certificate to perform an undertaker-free funeral to how to protect one’s self from risky prepaid funeral plans.