A Michigan dentist with 40 years of experience is challenging a 2020 directive from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that requires all health care professionals to take implicit bias training to keep their professional licenses.

Kent Wildern, a dentist who practiced in Grand Rapids, was forced to surrender his license after he refused to complete the hotly debated social training.

The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs implemented new rules in 2022 that compel more than 400,000 health care professionals to complete two hours of implicit bias training every renewal cycle.

Michiganders licensed by the state across 26 occupations ranging from medical practice to santitary services to acupuncture must complete the training to renew their professional licenses. Veterinarians were exempted.

Michigan’s licensing agency has fined at least 132 people for not fulfilling the requirement, and it fined other health care professionals a collective $75,000 in 2024, Michigan Capitol Confidential reported in September

New applicants for a health care license must have completed two hours of implicit bias training within the previous five years. Anyone seeking a new or renewed license must complete one hour of implicit bias training for each year of the relevant license cycle.

“It is unconstitutional for Michigan to weaponize its licensing powers to force health care professionals to choose between their careers and submitting to ideological indoctrination,” Wilson Freeman, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, said in a statement. “Moreover, Michigan’s mandate for implicit bias training came from an unelected agency rather than the Legislature, sidestepping any public debate on the issue."

Some health care workers, like Wildern, have surrendered their licenses rather than comply.

About eight states require continuing implicit bias education credits for health care workers, Freeman said. But Michigan is the only state that imposed the requirement via directive instead of legislation.

Previously, Michigan lawmakers required health care workers to take human trafficking training, a requirement passed through the Legislature, Wilder said.

“The governor circumvented the Legislature entirely and mandated this training without any input from the other branch of government that she’s required to get input from,” Wilder said in a phone interview with CapCon.

If the implicit bias training requirement stands, Michigan’s next governor can mandate patriotism classes for 400,000 health care workers, Freeman said.

“In my judgment, under the theory that (the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs) is putting out, there’s nothing to prevent that... LARA can create whatever training it desires, as long as they assert in their unreviewable authority that it’s beneficial for them.”

The state’s licensing agency has committed ultra vires, a Latin phrase meaning “when an administrative agency does something that is outside of the power that’s delegated to it by the Legislature,” Freeman said.

Michigan governmental agencies will spend more than $150,000 to hold a conference on climate-related policies in April. The policies likely to be discussed will, however, have little effect on the climate, according to a university-based scientist.

Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy will hold its 2025 Healthy Climate Conference on April 22-23 at the Huntington Place in Detroit. The department’s plans call for the state to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.

Speakers will discuss the transition to electric vehicles, how to decarbonize cities, clean the electric grid, and reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, according to a website for the conference.

All of these things would increase the cost of electricity while hurting reliability, Michigan Capitol Confidential has reported.

Grand Rapids, the state’s second-largest city, urges residents to drive less, use less energy, and switch to driving electric vehicles. Other cities enacting climate change policies include East Lansing, Jackson, Muskegon, Sterling Heights and Warren. Some cities are receiving members of a state-financed climate action corps who have fanned out across the state to help local governments develop their own plans.

Any laws and programs enacted to promote carbon neutrality or solar and wind energy would have almost no impact on the climate but would hurt the reliability of current energy supplies, CapCon has reported.

Michigan’s energy costs are already high for its region. But state officials continue to advocate their climate and energy policy. “We are dedicated to reaching our interim 2030 goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 52% from 2005 baselines in an equitable manner,” the state’s environmental policy department said.

The department will host a one-and-a-half-day MI Healthy Climate Conference to report on the progress of the MI Healthy Michigan plan. This conference is expected to draw more than 800 attendees.

Attendees must pay between $50 and $225 to attend.

The expected cost of the conference is $152,246, according to an email CapCon obtained through a records request.

Attendance fees total $32,400 while sponsorship revenue totaled $17,000, James A. Ostrowski, who manages outreach for the environmental agency, wrote to CapCon in a March 19 email.

The state’s climate plan faces challenges.

The MI Healthy Climate plan calls for 2 million electric vehicles driving on state roads in five years. Right now, there are about 50,000 electric vehicles registered statewide.

Michigan aims to draw 100% of its energy come from renewable sources by 2040.

In 2023 renewable energy, mostly from wind turbines, provided 11% of Michigan’s total in-state net generation of electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The state of Michigan will miss its goal of having net-zero emissions by 2050, said John R. Christy, distinguished professor of atmospheric and earth sciences and state climatologist at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Michigan consumes too much power to rely solely on renewable energy, Christy wrote in an email to CapCon. It consumes almost five times more energy than it produces, and it ranks 10th nationwide in population and total energy consumption, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Sponsors of the Detroit conference included EGLE, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, the Michigan Infrastructure Office, the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Natural Resources, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Treasury, and the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, according to the conference website.