Weaponized Ethics: How Licensing Boards Became Ideological Cartels
The Dangerous Merger of Morality and Licensing
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What happens when ideologically based codes of ethics are used to arbitrate law?
Or worse—when belief in an ideology becomes enforceable conduct?
Across the country, our professions are in disarray. Underqualified students are being admitted and advanced through professional programs to satisfy a narrative. At the same time, licensed professionals are being required to take implicit bias and other ideologically driven training just to renew their credentials.
Like so many bureaucratic backwaters, accreditation and licensing operate out of sight. Most Americans assume they’re functioning as intended. Meanwhile, major media outlets ignore them in favor of flashier headlines and clickbait scandal.
But this quiet corner of governance is where public trust is quietly being eroded.
Many Americans can feel it, even if they don’t have the specifics: a creeping sense that experts can’t be trusted. Those trying to enter a licensed field know the feeling more acutely. They’re forced to navigate a gauntlet of ideological hurdles, bureaucratic whims, and the looming threat of debt—with no career guarantee on the other side.
The Cartel Problem
Professional organizations and licensure boards work hand in glove. In most states, licensing boards are populated by professionals from within the field—often handpicked by their own professional associations. In other words, the people deciding who gets to enter the field are often the same ones already profiting from it.
If that sounds like a cartel, that’s because it fits the definition.
While the headlines fixate on the cost of eggs, licensing cartels are quietly inflating the cost of everything from mental health care to hairstyling.
According to antitrust and licensing researcher Rebecca Haw Allensworth, one in five working adults in the U.S. needs a license to do their job. What began as a narrow protection against unqualified doctors and lawyers has ballooned into a dense network of nearly 2,000 licensing boards covering almost 300 professions in at least one state.
Here’s a glimpse of Tennessee’s list. Each state is different, yet across the country, to legally work in some surprising professions one must obtain a license. This is a short list of careers increasingly limited to those with the time and money to get a license: auctioneer, alarm system installer, florist, massage therapist, security guard, barber, court reporter—even a scrap metal dealer.
These requirements to obtain licenses aren’t just costly—they’re protectionist. Sold to the public as industry self-regulation that would guarantee better practitioners, in practice, licensing limits supply and drives up prices. Basic economics.
Adding insult to injury, Allensworth's research suggests that licensing boards—despite their zeal at keeping people out—are far less consistent about removing bad actors once they’re in.
Even the Catholic Church failed to police itself against predators. Why should we expect any better from professional boards?
The Ideology Creep
Enter moral ideology.
As strange as it sounds, we’ve now entrusted these same boards—already compromised by self-interest—to enforce ethical codes rooted in identity-based worldviews. These codes are then treated as legal standards. Meanwhile, continuing education mandates force licensed professionals to study concepts like systemic oppression and implicit bias to maintain good standing.
It's no wonder we have a corruption problem.
This dynamic is a major reason ideological capture spread so rapidly through multiple professions. In fields like counseling and social work, social justice and multicultural ideology are deeply embedded directly into their ethical codes.
These codes are more than aspirational—they’re enforceable. In fact, one such code was used in court to suppress a trainee counselor’s First Amendment rights.
Colorado's Gag Rule and the Coming Supreme Court Fight
Texas has taken early steps to cut multicultural mandates from its licensure requirements. Other states are going the opposite direction.
Take Colorado. The state passed a law restricting what counselors are allowed to say to transgender-identifying teens. Specifically, therapists are forbidden from encouraging clients to question that feeling or consider a change in their sexual orientation—regardless of what the client needs, what the client wants or what the therapist believes is helpful.
A legal challenge—Chiles v. Salazar—is now on its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. At stake: whether a state can prohibit certain viewpoints in therapy under the guise of protecting clients.
And while the court deliberates, Colorado’s counseling board continues to wield the American Counseling Association’s Code of Ethics—an ideological document that demands allegiance to a “multicultural worldview” while prohibiting therapists from “imposing their own values” on clients.
See the contradiction? You must hold a multicultural worldview—but you may not hold any other.
The Tightrope for Professionals
Some may feel a false sense of security. Didn’t the Trump administration fix all this?
Not even close.
What we’re dealing with is bigger than one administration or party. Ethical codes, accreditation requirements, licensing standards, and ideological state laws now overlap in ways that make it nearly impossible for professionals to speak freely or act on conscience.
Every day they practice, they walk a legal and ideological tightrope. That is—if they’re allowed to practice at all.
Licensing boards, operating under the banner of “protecting the public,” are functioning like ideological cartels: inflating prices, reducing access, and muzzling dissent.
From Colorado’s gag rule to mandatory bias training, these boards have overstepped their original purpose. They now wield ethical codes like weapons—stifling professional autonomy and restricting the free flow of ideas in fields that depend on trust and honesty.
Time to Shine a Light
Enough.
It’s time to bring this shadowy system into the light. That means:
Demanding transparency from licensing boards. Tennessee is a good model of that.
Reviewing your state’s licensure requirements.
Asking your representatives why ideological mandates are being enforced through professional codes.
Supporting legal challenges like Chiles v. Salazar that defend free speech and professional discretion.
Consider cutting licensing loose from state authority and making it an opt-in offering professionals can work for or not.
Licensing boards should serve the public—not themselves, and not a political orthodoxy.
Until they do, our trust in licensed professions will remain broken. Rebuilding that trust starts with scrutiny, sunlight, and the courage to speak plainly.
One honest step at a time.
Further Reading
Cartels by Another Name: Should Licensed Occupations Face Antitrust Scrutiny? by Rebecca Haw Allensworth
Chiles v. Salazar: Will the Supreme Court Finally Address Professional Speech by Cody Barnett
Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites by Ilya Shapiro
The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong by Rebecca Haw Allensworth
NIFLA and the Argument Against “Professional Speech”
“Whatever It Is, I’m Against It”: Resistance to Change in Higher Education by Brian Rosenberg
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About
Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.
Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.
You can also find my work at Minding the Campus
Licensing in general should be reserved for professions that need it, like doctors. Most professions dont need it and its just a racket. Time to remove the majority of licenses.