Hold Your Horses! You Need a License First

Whoa! The state is in the stable

For years, when conservatives worried about aggressive bureaucracies coming after their property or their speech, they worried most about agencies such as the Department of Natural Resources, the Department of Transportation, and, during Covid, the Department of Health Services—agencies that sought to assume ever-larger authority over daily life.

Sometimes they were vicious and jack-booted, as when the DNR forced property owners to tear down their homes over relatively minor shoreland violations, and sometimes they were totalitarian, as when agencies trampled fundamental civil liberties and medical freedom with glee during Covid, but it could be that those turn out to be the good old days.

That’s because the pot of tyranny being cooked up these days by another agency is just as destructive and oppressive and even more sinister in the covert and methodical ways it operates. We’re pretty much all familiar with it by now, if not with its debilitating impacts on liberty: Say hello to the Department of Safety and Professional Services, or DSPS, an agency that increasingly reveals how modern government exercises power not through legislatures or the courts but through credentialing, licensure, compliance criteria, and bureaucratic permission slips.

It’s a bureaucratic empire with a legitimate claim to the throne of administrative absolutism, a licensing leviathan that has been tunneling quietly below the surface, perhaps not as obviously destructive but potentially even more invasive because it sits directly at the gateway to employment and entrepreneurship.

It is a new neo-guild state, in which bureaucracies empower regulatory cartels to police entire professions to ensure compliance with government “standards,” and it is one of the essential ways in which bureaucratic collectivism operates. In manufacturing and other industrial sectors, bureaucrats use the sword of scientific expertise to impose regulations and standards that just happen to conform to the most radical versions of climate ideology. In the health agencies, it’s the scientific consensus of the medical profession, stamped with a seal of approval by their pharmaceutical and medical overlords, that sets standards for nutrition and for vaccination, which, again, magically conform to progressive narratives.

At least they did until the Trump administration came along.

Then, on the state level, there’s the gated community known as occupational licensing. The list of licenses needed to make a living grows by the year, so much so that the question is no longer merely whether government may regulate fraud or dangerous conduct but whether citizens must receive bureaucratic permission before they may teach, explain, demonstrate, or advertise specialized knowledge.

The difference is transformational. The former protects the public; the latter enslaves it. Run an unapproved seminar and it’s off to the gulag with you, do not pass go, because once the government has the power to decide who may instruct willing adults, it acquires extraordinary leverage over labor markets, professional speech, and ultimately the range of ideas citizens are permitted to exchange within entire occupations.

Horse & Body Works

And that is exactly why a new lawsuit against DSPS, Masterson v Hereth (DSPS), matters so much. It’s a case about needing state approval to conduct instructional seminars and courses in taking care of your horse with non-invasive, light-touch therapy designed to relieve tension. At first glance, it sounds absurd. I mean, who needs a state license for non-prescription, non-diagnostic horse bodywork designed to relax the horse, right? More important, who cares?

Well, we all should, because DSPS bureaucrats do. And behind the hay bales lies one of the clearest examples yet of how bureaucratic governance increasingly operates—not through democratic lawmaking but through administrative credentialing systems that slowly transform the state into a gatekeeper of work and even speech.

The irony is almost literary.

Here’s what’s going on: A man named Jim Masterson has spent 30 years working with animals. As the Institute for Justice (IJ), which represents Masterson, puts it, it is a passion he’s had for his entire life. Along the way, he developed a signature method of animal care—the Masterson Method—that he has taught to students around the world.

Demand for his method has become so overwhelming that he has trained people to become instructors in it. One of those instructors is a co-plaintiff in the case, Becky Tenges, a lifelong animal lover, who has willingly paid to use and teach the technique. As time has gone by, no one has alleged any fraud or injury, nor alleged any public danger, the IJ points out. So everyone is happy, right?

Not everyone. Not the state of Wisconsin, specifically the DSPS. And so their bureaucrats showed up on Masterson’s digital doorstep, not because anyone complained but because, in the view of the DSPS, teaching such a technique requires permission from the Grand Exalted Bureaucracy. Here’s how the IJ puts it:

That should alarm every Wisconsinite. When government at any level tells us we can’t teach our skills or train other willing adults in their use without prior state approval, licensing authority has moved far beyond regulating dangerous conduct and into regulating the transmission of knowledge itself. It becomes a free speech issue. That’s the real story here, and it has been coming for years. Let’s take a look.

The politics of permission

Those who follow Wisconsin’s regulatory battles have watched this machinery expanding for a long time, and not just by DSPS. Back in 2022, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) and others successfully pushed back against an attempt by the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) to impose commercial pool regulations on private vacation-home hot tubs and swimming pools.

Under those proposed rules, ordinary homeowners renting lodging through Airbnb or VRBO would have been forced to comply with commercial waterpark-level regulations, requirements so burdensome that some owners either shut down amenities or sold their properties entirely. One owner testified that the regulations would have required $150,000 in upgrades merely to allow guests to use the indoor pool. Another sold his rental property outright after years of battles with regulators. And never mind that many other states do not impose such requirements.

At the time, WILL policy director Kyle Koenen summarized the issue succinctly: “It’s encouraging to see DATCP abandon their efforts to impose burdensome red tape on short-term rental owners with pools and hot tubs. Property owners will now have some well-deserved certainty that they can make a living without the heavy hand of government impeding their ability to do so.”

Notice the recurring theme. The heavy hand is not being used to shut down fraudsters or stop wrongdoing; it is being used to slap down law-abiding small business owners and to deny their guests enjoyment.

In the world of bureaucracy, that would have been a win-win. The state—more and more through DSPS—increasingly assumes the authority to decide whether citizens may operate economically at all unless they first satisfy sprawling administrative demands. That same philosophy surfaced again in Wisconsin’s “conversion therapy” battles, where DSPS-linked regulatory boards banned certain forms of therapeutic speech through administrative rulemaking after legislators declined to enact such prohibitions by statute.

As I have previously explored, the issue was never simply about therapy techniques. It was about whether unelected bureaucracies may dictate which viewpoints licensed professionals may express to willing clients. Tellingly, when lawmakers refused to codify the ban, regulators imposed it anyway through licensing authority. And this week, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such bans are unconstitutional, Gov. Tony Evers doubled down, declaring that his administrative state “has no intention of repealing Wisconsin’s conversion therapy ban.”

That is how modern administrative governance increasingly functions. The legislature becomes optional. So does the constitution. The bureaucracy proceeds regardless. For way too long, we have let the bureaucratic colossus grow in size and regulatory scope, opening the barn door of oppression.

And now the agency’s horses are running right through it.

The Masterson Method

In this case, internationally known equine practitioner Jim Masterson and instructor Becky Tenges filed suit in federal court in April. The facts almost read like satire.

As IJ explains in the complaint, equestrian horses are athletes and need physical recovery like any other athlete. Over time, Masterson noticed that horses in recovery would respond with subtle physical cues to practitioners working with them, and so, drawing on his experience and keen observations, he began to develop his own techniques.

“The resulting system of bodywork centered around working with the horse to relieve tension, rather than simply working on the horse, in contrast to other forms of bodywork, such as massage, which involve more physical pressure on the horse,” the complaint states. “And so, the ‘Masterson Method’ was born.”

Over time, Masterson refined the system and won international acclaim: “In 2006, Jim worked with the U.S. Equestrian Endurance Team at the World Equestrian Games in Germany. Over the next eight years, Jim would continue to work with the U.S. Equestrian Team at multiple international competitions, from Malaysia to France.”

By the mid-2000s, the complaint continues, there was so much demand he began to teach his method to others, the cornerstone of which is a weekend seminar where students practice basic Masterson Method techniques on horses.

“Since he started teaching the Masterson Method, thousands of people—owners, therapists, trainers, or just plain horse enthusiasts—have attended his cornerstone weekend seminar,” the complaint states. “Jim’s cornerstone weekend seminar has been offered around the world, including in Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Multiple private professional organizations, including the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, have endorsed Jim’s cornerstone weekend seminar to satisfy continuing education requirements.”

His efforts have evolved into the inclusion of a certified practitioner program that requires at least 426 training hours. One of those certified practitioners is Becky Tenges, who became an instructor in the method.

To make a long story short, everybody was riding high in the saddle until March 2023. That’s when the government showed up to help, as Ronald Reagan might say. In an email, according to the complaint, a department bureaucrat, Colleen Uhlenkamp, informed Masterson’s team that their school needed approval by Wisconsin’s Educational Approval Program (EAP), which is housed within DSPS. EAP’s mission is to “evaluate” and approve private trade, technical, career, distance learning, and degree-granting schools.

But the regulations EAP pushes are both burdensome and comprehensive. They go well beyond commonsense anti-fraud protections—after all, that’s what Wisconsin’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act is for—and are also unconstitutional under the First Amendment because they interfere with Masterson’s and Tengen’s right to speech, the lawsuit asserts.

None of that bothered our DSPS bureaucrat, who wasn’t asking politely, according to the complaint.

“During that correspondence, in an email on April 7, 2023, Uhlenkamp stated that Jim’s school would ‘NEED to discontinue advertising for, recruiting, enrolling, or attempting to offer any training to Wisconsin residents,’” the complaint states. Our comply-or-else DSPS minion also “threatened to refer Jim’s school to the Attorney General; she warned [the school] that the Attorney General could impose $500-per-day fines on Jim’s school for violations of the Act.”

Naturally, Masterson complied. After all, $500 a day adds up pretty fast. Nonetheless, he maintained that his courses were exempt from the law because they were “avocational or recreational in nature” and did not lead “to a vocational objective.”

“Jim explained that his courses work to enhance horse owners or equine professionals’ relationships with their horses,” the complaint stated. “And Jim also explained that even his certification process works to serve as an acknowledgment that the participants have demonstrated proficiency in Masterson Method techniques.”

The state didn’t budge—no surprise there—and, not only that, would not even allow the basic cornerstone weekend seminar until the state conducted a compliance review. Again, to no one’s surprise, the compliance review found noncompliance, and the DSPS ruled that the entire school must undergo EAP approval.

All this was a shock to Masterson’s system, and not the equine one.

“I teach because people want to hear what I have to say and because my work helps people care for their animals,” Masterson said. “For the state to come in and tell me what I can and cannot say to people who want to hear it, and, especially given my entire track record and years of practice, it’s just not right.”

It’s also not constitutional, says the IJ’s lead attorney in the case, Prashanta Augustine.

“Wisconsin cannot tell Jim and Becky that they don’t have the right to teach,” Augustine said. “The First Amendment protects Americans’ right to speech within their occupation. Teaching is speech, and burdensome restrictions on speech—particularly those that regulate speech based on its subject matter—are unconstitutional.”

When Teaching Becomes a Regulated Activity

The bottom line was that Masterson’s sole offense was teaching without bureaucratic blessing. But within Wisconsin bureaucracies, that’s the most egregious offense of them all. Because any single act without government approval, if allowed to stand, threatens the authority of the bureaucracies—the one thing bureaucracies cannot tolerate.

The details of that power are astonishing, as Augustine and other attorneys point out in Masterson’s complaint. For one thing, it means his school must pay a fee, submit an application, undergo an examination, and be approved before the school can operate or even advertise in the state.

“With this bevy of mandates comes a vast delegation of rulemaking authority to the Department,” the complaint states. “In fact, the Act even delegates the development of criteria governing approval.”

For example, a school must demonstrate that it is “in sound financial condition.” It must also have “adequate space, suitable and sufficient equipment, and sufficient and appropriate instructional materials to carry out its program.”

“The Department imposes compliance with a separate set of refund policies,” the complaint observes. “The Department also requires that a school have ‘procedures to evaluate its educational programs, improve instruction and review overall operations,’ and it requires that the school consider ‘student, alumni and employer feedback on the effectiveness of the curriculum.’”

There’s more. A school is further required to provide “annual enrollment information, using its definitions, delineating the number of dropouts, completers, graduates, and employed.” And IJ points out that the agency promulgates criteria for both the instruction of and the actual content of the school offering.

What all this amounts to is that simple seminars and courses designed to teach horse owners and equine professionals how to care for their animals are transformed into government schools run by and for the government. They care not at all about the expertise of the curriculum developer, the input of instructors, or the public. And, as the complaint observes, DSPS is ruthless in its enforcement.

“Schools must comply, or else,” the complaint states. “Contracts can be voided, and approvals can be denied or revoked. And those who fail to comply with the statute risk $500-per-day penalties or even criminal prosecution. This is what the Department would require of plaintiffs, just because they want to teach willing students in Wisconsin.”

Behind the practical consequences—which are substantial—IJ points to the very real threat of suppression of speech.

“Plaintiffs want to exercise their constitutional rights,” the complaint states. “They want to teach Jim’s signature method to willing students in Wisconsin. But they can’t unless they comply with the Act. Requiring plaintiffs to comply with the Act before they can teach Jim’s signature method in Wisconsin is a prior restraint on speech. That violates the First Amendment.”

What’s more, the complaint continues, the act imposes burdens so extreme that compliance is not feasible.

“Compliance with the Act would require Jim’s school to waste substantial time and resources preparing to undergo the Department’s months-long initial approval process,” the complaint states. “Compliance with the Act would require Jim’s school to waste substantial time and resources preparing market studies, strategic plans, and ‘SWOT’ analyses. Jim’s school has operated just fine—indeed, it has grown substantially—without any of these things.”

Compliance would require Jim’s school to overhaul the policies, procedures, and basic contracts it already uses, Augustine and the attorneys argue. Among other things, they would have to develop a school catalog that conforms to the Department’s 60-plus-item checklist; the school would have to procure a surety bond of thousands of dollars and chase down barns that volunteer to host Masterson Method courses for documentation about their buildings.

“That doesn’t just burden Plaintiffs; it burdens the barns,” the complaint states. “And it would require Jim’s school to change its business model—a single offering of the advanced five-day course is often conducted at five separate host barns.”

The bottom line, the attorneys argued, complying with the act would force Masterson to pay calibrated fees to fund the administration of an unconstitutional statute.

“Compliance with the Act would cause Jim’s courses—which teach his signature method—to be subject to the upvote or downvote of department bureaucrats who, on information and belief, are ill-qualified to opine on performance animal care generally, let alone Jim’s signature method specifically,” the complaint states. “Those bureaucrats are, on information and belief, similarly ill-equipped to opine on the credentials of Jim’s instructors, who Jim has selected based on an assessment of their proficiency in his signature method.”

More time and resources spent complying with the act means less time and resources spent conducting courses, whether in Wisconsin or elsewhere, the attorneys argue.

“Less time spent conducting courses means that instructors like Becky have fewer opportunities to engage in constitutionally protected speech, and Jim has fewer opportunities to propagate his constitutionally protected message,” Augustine and the attorneys argued.

In the end, IJ attorneys argue, the onerous bureaucratic mandates were enabled by an unconstitutional delegation of authority to the agency, which then ran wild with it. And now, they argue, the act can’t be fixed simply by narrowing the delegation of authority to DSPS.

“The Act itself—with its many mandates, its onerous requirements—substantially burdens plaintiffs’ speech and is unconstitutional,” the complaint concluded. “But for the Act, plaintiffs would teach Wisconsin residents the full range of courses offered by Jim’s school without fear of government intrusion or retribution at the hands of defendants.”

Government speech, government economy

Perhaps the most revealing part of all this is the ideological structure underlying the system. The department’s rules require that such programs as Masterson’s be evaluated and approved according to, among other things, “documented labor market needs” and whether courses prepare students for “entry-level positions.” He would have to present to the government the program’s “core values.”

All of which means government bureaucrats are no longer merely licensing conduct. They are increasingly deciding what kinds of knowledge, vocational training, and workforce development are sufficiently legitimate to receive government sanction. When the government decides what the market needs and judges whether your educational courses and seminars fit within that narrative—not to mention your core values—that is not a free-market economy.

Neither is it a free speech society.

That is a bureaucratically run economy in which the government calls the shots, and this one case is just the tip of the huge iceberg that floats in the waters of the American economy today.

And this is where the DSPS story becomes much bigger than horses. Because the agency itself openly boasts of its rapidly expanding administrative footprint. According to the agency, DSPS now issues more than 240 unique licenses, administers dozens of regulatory boards and councils, enforces state building codes, oversees fire-prevention programs, and manages prescription-monitoring systems.

It employs 250 workers and has expanded to five offices around the state. Long gone are the days when it was simply a credentials’ processor. Indeed, the agency has begun implementing such things as “Cross-Profession Minimum Data Set” workforce surveys to collect labor-market data for policy planning and workforce forecasting, while Wisconsin has become the first state offering universal digital professional licenses with QR-code verification.

In other words, DSPS is evolving beyond traditional licensing administration into something far broader, not merely credential tracking but regulatory labor management. The agency presents this as efficiency and convenience, and, to be fair, parts of it are. But institutionally, it also stands for something deeper, a profoundly 21st-century form of administrative governance whose fundamental platform is a licensing system that creates extraordinary leverage over the workforce.

That leverage becomes even more significant when one considers the scale of the regulatory machinery involved. As has happened over and over throughout the whole of government, the bureaucracy has obliterated the separation of powers between the branches. DSPS conducts investigations, holds hearings, monitors agreements, approves corrective action plans, and suspends and revokes licenses. It sets the standards, judges the standards, and executes the standards.

It is enormous power over a workforce in which some 25 percent of all occupations now require a license, a number that is growing. Sadly, most citizens never vote for the people who administer these systems, never attend hearings, and barely know boards exist, even within their own occupations. Yet these bodies increasingly exercise enormous influence over who may work, how they may work, and under what ideological and procedural conditions they may continue working.

And because occupational speech is increasingly embedded inside licensure, the danger extends beyond economics into the First Amendment itself. The Masterson case exposes that reality quintessentially.

Bureaucratic cartels

There is another layer here that lawmakers should examine carefully. As referenced above, occupational boards increasingly function like neo-guild cartels, with bureaucratic approval.

In a 2025 briefing paper, Stephen Slivinski, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, described licensing boards as intentionally structured to act as “gatekeepers of an occupation” while exhibiting “the look of a cartel.”

That is a harsh characterization but a reasonable one.

Many licensing systems are heavily influenced by incumbent professionals who directly benefit from limiting market entry and controlling credential standards. It is a classic conflict of interest, and the dynamic creates the risk of anti-competitive enforcement disguised as public protection. In other instances, the control of licensing boards by bureaucrats, even when there are no competitive conflicts of interest, ensures that government controls occupational standards and, thus, occupational membership, for its own benefit, ideological or otherwise.

In his paper, Slivinski proposes substantial reforms, including stripping licensing boards of enforcement powers and moving enforcement into more directly accountable executive agencies:

“There is little compelling reason for the government to delegate the enforcement (and sometimes interpretation) of licensing laws to boards that are designed to be ruled by those with a clear conflict of interest,” he wrote. “To put it another way, there is no real reason why licensing laws can’t be enforced by the usual executive state government entities, just like many other state laws. Licensing boards should be eliminated or fundamentally reformed to reflect this fact.”

He also recommends increasing public representation on boards and reducing professional guilds’ ability to dominate appointments. And this: “If licensing boards are kept as independent bodies, they should be stripped of most, if not all, of their active enforcement powers and be made, at most, an administrative body.”

Precisely. Whether one agrees with every reform is secondary to the broader point. These systems now exercise enormous influence over economic mobility and occupational freedom. And yet they often operate far below the level of democratic visibility.

The deeper issue here is not horses. It is not DSPS alone. It is the accelerating migration of authority to permanent expert systems to command the economy—and speech and values—through licensing and credentialism.

The state is already in the stable, but we must not let it ride roughshod over our freedoms.