How we got here

Professional licensing is not a new idea. The Supreme Court affirmed its core principle in 1889: states may regulate professions where the public must confidently rely on a verified degree of skill. But by the 1950s, that principle had gone past its reasonable limits—hundreds of training hours to braid hair, florist licensing, tour guide permits. These were fair targets for reform, and a consensus emerged that for some occupations, licensing had gone too far. 

What followed was not a careful effort to find the requirements without a public safety rationale and fix them. Instead came a one-size-fits-all “anti-licensing” approach—cookie-cutter model legislation that relaxed standards rules for hair shampooers and, in the same stroke, for the CPAs auditing your retirement fund and the landscape architects designing your city’s stormwater systems. 

The public risk of a mistake varies by profession, which is why one-size-fits-all licensure isn’t responsible.

What’s really at stake

When professional standards are weakened, the consequences fall on real people. In September 2018, a natural gas pipeline overpressurization in Massachusetts set off explosions and fires that killed one person, injured 22 others, and damaged 131 structures.

The investigation found that the engineering plans for that project were never sealed by a licensed professional engineer (PE)—Massachusetts law did not require it. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that a licensed engineer’s seal should be required on all public utility engineering plans to reduce the likelihood of accidents like this.

This is what happens when standards are lowered or ignored—and weakening the boards that set and enforce those standards produces the same outcome: fewer experts making decisions, less accountability, and eventually the same consequences. This is exactly the kind of effort we’re seeing more of: threats to boards that hold the standards in place.

Here’s what’s at stake, and where we stand.