Kathy Hoekstra is a Michigan resident and a development communications officer at the Pacific Legal Foundation. She contends that the State of Michigan has weaponized medical licensing during the Trifecta era:
Hoekstra: Michigan weaponizes healthcare licensing for ideology, not medicine
By Kathy Hoekstra - April 16, 2025In her recent State of the State address, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called for bipartisan collaboration on occupational licensing reform.
As Michael Reitz pointed out in a March 18 op-ed for the Mackinac Center, that invitation is welcome — professional licensing in Michigan has become excessively burdensome.
This news should especially resonate with Michigan’s barbers, whose 1,800-hour training requirement starkly contrasts the governor’s pandemic advice to simply “Google how to do a haircut or throw your hair in a ponytail.”
To be fair, Whitmer did relax some healthcare licensing regulations during the pandemic, albeit temporarily.
But there’s one pandemic-era edict still standing that has nothing to do with healthcare and everything to do with ideology.
It’s mandatory implicit bias training, and it’s unconstitutional. The mandate emerged in the summer of 2020 when Gov. Whitmer issued executive directives ordering the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) to establish implicit bias training standards for the state’s 400,000-plus healthcare professionals.
In her directives, Whitmer characterized implicit bias as unconscious “thoughts and feelings” that “are difficult to control” yet “can shape behavior,” and its injection into healthcare licensing is necessary to serve her stated agenda of “addressing racism as a public health crisis.”
With few exceptions, this sweeping mandate applies across all healthcare fields — from dentistry, nursing and physical therapy to social work, acupuncture and marriage counseling.
Even radiologists, who rarely meet their patients face-to-face, must comply or face severe consequences.Since September 2024, LARA has fined at least 132 healthcare professionals nearly $76,000 for failing to meet this requirement. Others have had credentials suspended or surrendered their licenses rather than comply — exacerbating Michigan’s healthcare worker shortage.The impact is not just professional; it’s personal.
Take Dr. Kent Wildern, a longtime Grand Rapids dentist who, for 40 years, provided free dental care to underprivileged children alongside his practice. The new mandate presented him with a gut-wrenching choice: comply with the irrelevant and controversial training of dubious value or abandon his profession. He chose his principles, letting his dental license lapse even though it meant he couldn’t continue the work he loves, not even for charity.
Beyond its irrelevance, this mandate has critical legal problems that the governor should have recognized from the start. The mandate came from LARA, an administrative agency, rather than the legislature. State law allows LARA to set standards for clinical skills necessary for practice only, not broad social policy initiatives. Even if the law could somehow be construed as giving LARA’s unelected bureaucrats the power to weaponize the licensing process to promote race-essential viewpoints, the law would run afoul of the Michigan and U.S. Constitutions.
In addition to exceeding its authority, LARA’s ideological requirements for professional licensure violate citizens’ fundamental rights to earn a living and freedom of thought.
Michiganians deserve healthcare professionals selected for their medical expertise, not their compliance with disputed social theories. And our healthcare professionals deserve to obtain and renew their licenses without undue and unnecessary government interference. LARA’s unlawful licensing mandate denies both. Represented at no charge by Pacific Legal Foundation, where I work, Wildern is challenging LARA’s authority with a lawsuit in the Michigan Court of Claims.
As his battle moves through the courts, policymakers of all stripes should recognize that meaningful licensing reform isn’t just about reducing hours or streamlining processes.
It’s about ensuring regulations serve legitimate public health and safety purposes, not advancing ideological agendas. Let’s hope the bipartisanship Whitmer spoke of extends to eliminating this unjust licensing burden for quality healthcare, professional dignity and constitutional governance.
The case is Dr. Kent Wildern v. Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.
Pacific Legal Foundation's presser.
Michigan dentist sues the state over unlawful licensing restrictions
April 15, 2025Grand Rapids, MI; April 15, 2025: Dr. Kent Wildern, a dentist with a 40-year career providing care in Grand Rapids, is challenging a mandate that requires all Michigan healthcare professionals to undergo ideological training to maintain their licenses. In 2021, the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) implemented new rules that compel over 400,000 healthcare professionals to complete two hours of implicit bias training every renewal cycle.
“It is unconstitutional for Michigan to weaponize its licensing powers to force healthcare professionals to choose between their careers and submitting to ideological indoctrination,” said Wilson Freeman, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. “Moreover, Michigan’s mandate for implicit bias training came from an unelected agency rather than the legislature, sidestepping any public debate on the issue.”
Failing to comply with these illegal regulations has resulted in serious consequences, with LARA fining at least 132 healthcare professionals nearly $76,000 since September 2024 for non-compliance.
With a worsening shortage of healthcare workers in Michigan, many providers have had their credentials suspended, and still others have reluctantly surrendered their licenses rather than comply, including Dr. Wildern. Government orders and regulations that compel such behavior violate citizens’ right to earn a living and far exceed the agency’s authority under state law.
With the support of the Pacific Legal Foundation, Dr. Wildern is taking legal action to challenge LARA’s mandate in state court. His goal is to restore the constitutional rights of Michiganders to work without unreasonable, unconstitutional ideological training requirements.
The case is Dr. Kent Wildern v. Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.
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