Gretchen Whitmer is mentioned in The Bob Zadek Show in a single excerpt, in an episode devoted to what the host calls the mini-administrative state. She is not a guest and is not interviewed; she enters the conversation as an illustration offered by the guest, Glenn Roper, during a discussion of pandemic-era emergency orders. The excerpts contain no biographical material, no account of her career or office, and no extended treatment of her beyond the one example.
The class-versus-individual argument
The episode’s discussion is framed by Bob Zadek, who argues that emergency powers are traditionally available to government only after a showing that a particular individual’s exercise of freedom causes harm to society. He states that due process, if not simple fair play, dictates that an individual cannot be lumped into a group and denied liberty on the basis of the group’s danger rather than his own behavior. He offers the example of a nail salon: when every nail salon is ordered closed, no finding has been made that this specific salon poses a threat. He extends the point to stay-at-home ordinances, observing that when he is ordered to stay home, no finding has been made that he individually constitutes a danger. He characterizes this as unusual in American jurisprudence, that substantial liberty has been deprived not because of individual behavior but because of membership in a broader group. He also draws an analogy to the core principles of Black Lives Matter, which he describes as a complaint that Blacks as a class have been harmed and are treated as members of a class rather than as individuals The Mini-Administrative State (2020).
Roper agrees that Zadek has hit on one of the key problems with these kinds of orders. He says that Americans are for the most part reasonable people and that most are willing to give government the benefit of the doubt in the early days of a pandemic, recognizing that restrictions may make sense while matters are being figured out. But several months in, he says, it is long past time to step back and call these kinds of things a big problem. He adds travel restrictions to the list, describing states that require quarantine for anyone who has touched foot in another state, with no analysis of whether the traveler was infected or in danger. He calls this broad-brush painting, putting people into classes without the individualized determination government should implement, and says such across-the-board restrictions no longer make sense months into the pandemic. He objects in particular to treating business as a category subject to broader restrictions than other human activity, noting the inconsistency of allowing people to gather to play cards while forbidding them to do someone’s hair or nails or exchange goods The Mini-Administrative State (2020).
The Whitmer example
It is in this context that Roper names Whitmer. He says that governors will issue orders of this kind and calls Whitmer, in Michigan, a particularly egregious example. The orders he describes say that a person may go to Home Depot and buy plumbing supplies but may not go to Home Depot and buy paint for the home. They also, he says, allow a person to buy furniture and appliances at Walmart while an appliance store specifically must be closed. Roper presents these as instances of arbitrariness and of damage done by broad-brush government action lacking individualized assessment. He notes that part of what PLF does is find individuals harmed by such orders and take them to court, to make government pay attention to individual circumstances, and says it is not enough to put people into classes and apply restrictions across the board The Mini-Administrative State (2020).
The excerpt does not identify the orders by number, date or issuing authority beyond Roper’s attribution to Whitmer, and does not say what legal challenge, if any, followed. Roper’s characterization of the orders as egregious is his own; Zadek does not adopt the phrase in the passage, and the host’s own examples are the nail salon and the stay-at-home order rather than the Michigan orders. The two speakers share the underlying principle — that regulation by class rather than by individual finding is the defect — but the concrete Michigan illustrations belong to Roper.
Across episodes
Only one episode in the excerpts touches on Whitmer, and it does so once, in a single passage by Roper; the excerpts show no development of the topic across episodes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Whitmer’s title, her state office, her party, or any date or details of her career, and they do not quote her or any representative of her administration. They do not name the Michigan orders, describe their legal basis, or report the outcome of any litigation over them. Nothing in the excerpts indicates that Whitmer was ever a guest on the program or that the host discussed her in any other episode.