A former Michigan dentist is suing the state over an implicit-bias-training requirement for health-care professionals Gov. Gretchen Whitmer mandated after George Floyd’s 2020 death — that declares only some people can be racist.
“Everybody needs to listen to Martin Luther King from way back in the day. It’s who you are, not what color you are,” Dr. Kent Wildern exclusively told The Post.
The Grand Rapids dentist of 40 years renounced his license in 2021 rather than take the ideological instruction required to keep it, explains the 14-page complaint, filed last week in the Michigan Court of Claims.
But he wants to return to the field.
“I like taking care of people,” he told The Post, noting he always provided free dental care to those in need.
“I’m 71. I’ve worked in the health-care industry since I was a boy. I worked at my dad’s pharmacy at 9. I was an Eagle Scout by the time I was 13. I worked three summers as a lifeguard” at a Boy Scott camp.
“I worked at the pharmacy weekends and summers while I was in dental school,” he recalled.
“My wife and I had no money and no house. I drove a Gremlin that you couldn’t get into except for the back hatch. I started my practice from scratch. That’s just the way it was back then.”
Wildern is represented by the California-based Pacific Legal Foundation, a public-interest law firm that defends against government overreach. Wildern’s lawyers believe the instruction required at every renewal is a classic example.
On going to renew his license, “state officials unleashed a proverbial kick in the teeth: a new implicit bias training mandate that forced Dr. Wildern to choose between his profession or his principles,” the firm said.
“This implicit bias training bothered me from day one, and I called the Michigan Dental Association and said, ‘Why do we have to take this?’ And they said, ‘Because it’s required by the governor,’” he told The Post.
That wasn’t good enough for Wildern: “One day I said I’ve had it. I’m losing my license because I don’t want to take this class.”
The suit targets Michigan’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, which handles occupational licensing in the state.
David Hoffa, a Pacific Legal Foundation attorney on the case, said the training rule goes beyond LARA’s purpose and powers.
“We just don’t find that there’s any lawful authority granted by the Legislature to LARA to make that type of rule in any of the statutes that either the governor or LARA has cited,” he told The Post.
In July 2020 — two months after Floyd died during his arrest in Minneapolis and one month after Whitmer marched with Black Lives Matter — the Democratic governor issued Executive Directive 2020-7, “Improving equity in the delivery of health care,” to achieve “racial justice.”
It ordered LARA to make rules that “establish implicit bias training standards” as a requirement for “licensure, registration, and renewal of licenses and registrations of health professionals.”
Garrett Soldano told The Post he’s been “kicking and screaming” against the training requirement ever since.
The Kalamazoo chiropractor led anti-lockdown protests that year, opposing Whitmer’s “nanny government.”
“It’s another example of government overreach,” he said, “hanging our license over our heads.”
Soldano felt so strongly about Whitmer’s reign that he ran for the right to face her, competing in the 2022 Republican gubernatorial primary but falling short to eventual nominee Tudor Dixon.
The trainings themselves — professionals have a few options to choose from, though they essentially stick to a standard script — treat bias as inevitable, only fixable with training.
As one instruction module explains: “Implicit biases can start as early as 3 years of age. As children age, they may begin to become more egalitarian in what they explicitly endorse, but their implicit biases may not necessarily change in accordance to these outward expressions.”
But the training asserts only certain groups can be racist.
“Racism is the ‘systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have relatively little social power . . . by members of the agent racial group who have relatively more social power,” begins an explainer.
“It’s freaking garbage,” Soldano said. “You’re basically telling every health-care professional in the state of Michigan that they’re racist and accusing us that we base our care schedule on racist bias.”
Soldano said he knows others who followed Wildern’s path out of their professions rather than take the trainings.
“But people like me who need this for putting food on the table?” Soldano said.
“It’s hard as hell to just take it, and every two years when I have to take that class, it just brings up the insanity of the pandemic and what she did.”
The requirement on the state’s 400,000 health professionals took effect June 1, 2022, and affects a wide range of career fields, from acupuncture to midwifery to social work.
Available trainings include “What Is Systemic Racism?” and “Impact of Racism on the Health & Well-Being of the Nation.”
Hoffa called the requirement an ideologically driven barrier to Wildern’s re-entry to the workforce.
“There’s a right to earn a living side of this as well,” Hoffa said. “This type of ideologically driven training is not the proper use of licensing requirements for professionals.”
President Trump signed executive orders his first day in office dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
But Wildern’s case will be decided in the Michigan court system, not federal court — which at the highest levels is run by Democratic judges and justices.
Appeals would go to the Michigan Court of Appeals and finally to the Michigan Supreme Court.
The latter ruled most of Whitmer’s COVID orders unconstitutional in October 2020 but didn’t include the training directive.
That was a 4-3 ruling — now Democrat-leaning justices control the top court 6-1.
“This is going to probably go all the way to the state Supreme Court, and I don’t have a lot of faith in them, and so that’s why I’m hoping that Michigan’s next governor overturns this bad boy and gets rid of it,” Soldano said.
Michigan has fined noncompliant professionals between $125 and $2,500 and suspended some licenses.
LARA did not respond to a request for comment.
Read the full article here
