LA Direct Models has struggled with California’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE), who for the last 30 months has been using them a provisional license while they were being investigated for various labor disputes – which includes the 5 Jane Does, where he was ordered to pay then $24,206.49 plus $106,670.23 in legal fees to their attorney.

Although this case LA Direct Models is currently appealing in Civid Court, it didn’t stop DLSE from abruptly terminating LA Direct Model’s talent agent license.

The Labor Commissioner was represented at the ffice of Administrative Hearings hearing by Barton Jacka, an attorney with the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, who mentioned on the record that it was he who made the decision stop issuing licenses to Direct Models in April 2021.

Originally scheduled for a number of days, the hearing lasted only a few hours after Jacka was unable or unwilling to present any evidence to demonstrate what facts the DLSE, an office of the government of the State of California, considered when it exercised its discretion not to issue another provisional license.

Jacka instead relied on a novel argument: that his own office had been violating California law by exceeding its statutory authority for nearly two years by issuing successive provisional licenses to Direct Models.

In the end, the judge disagreed and sided with LA Direct Models, stating that, “The Commissioner shall immediately issue to respondent a provisional 90-day talent agency license, to be effective on the date issued.”

In other words, California’s Department of Labor must renew LA Direct Model’s California Talent Agent License while the other pending cases continue to work it’s way through the legal system.