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Governor signs bill updating 1956 law

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed House Bill 4666 on Dec. 23, 2025, scrubbing racial language from the state’s insurance code that had sat untouched since 1956.

The law took effect right away. It updates Section 2082 of the Insurance Code, swapping out terms like “white persons” and “colored persons” for race-neutral wording.

The bill also raises fines for insurers that discriminate based on race.

The old law used Jim Crow terminology

Section 2082 was written in 1956 and never updated.

For nearly 70 years, the text referred to “white persons” and “colored persons, wholly or partially of African descent.”

The section was meant to ban racial discrimination in life insurance, but the language itself reflected the racial categories of the Jim Crow era.

Despite its good intent, the wording stayed exactly the same, word for word, through decades of change in civil rights law and public standards.

The section covers life insurance policies

Section 2082 applies to life insurance policies sold in Michigan. It bans insurers from charging different premiums based on a person’s race.

It also stops them from offering lower payouts or adding policy conditions that reduce benefits because of a policyholder’s race.

Any discriminatory terms written into a policy are automatically void under the law. Those protections existed before, but the language around them needed catching up.

New wording drops racial categories entirely

The updated law replaces every race-specific term with the phrase “race or color.”

It no longer frames protections as between “white” and “colored” people. Instead, it broadly bans any distinction or discrimination based on race or color.

The legal protections themselves stay the same. What changes is the framework, which now reflects how civil rights law actually works in the modern era.

Fines for insurers now double

Under the old law, an insurer that broke the rules faced a $500 penalty paid to the state. The new law raises that to a $1,000 civil fine per violation.

The old fine range ran from $50 to $500. Now it runs from $500 to $1,000, and violators can also face up to one year in county jail.

Michigan’s attorney general can pursue those fines in court, and judgments can be collected the same way as any judgment in favor of a policyholder.

Individual officers and agents face stiffer consequences too.

Sponsor introduced the bill for Juneteenth

State Rep. Brenda Carter, a Democrat from Pontiac, sponsored the bill. She introduced it on June 24, 2025, in recognition of Juneteenth.

Rep. John Fitzgerald, a Democrat from Wyoming, Mich., co-sponsored it. Carter serves as minority vice chair of the House Insurance Committee.

She is also the first Black woman from Michigan to hold a national leadership role within the National Council of Insurance Legislators.

Both chambers passed it almost unanimously

The bill sailed through both chambers with barely any opposition. The Michigan House passed it 104-1 on Oct. 23, 2025.

The Senate followed with a 35-1 vote on Dec. 18. Neither chamber amended the bill. Whitmer signed it the day after her office received it.

In a session where lawmakers sent very few bills to the governor’s desk, this one drew support from nearly every member in both parties.

A historic low session made passage notable

Only 74 bills became law during Michigan’s 2025 session, the fewest in a regular session since Michigan became a state in 1837.

That HB 4666 made it through such a narrow window says something about how broadly both parties supported it.

Whitmer signed 36 bills on the final day of signings alone, and this was one of them. The tight session made every slot competitive.

Other states are doing the same thing

Michigan is not alone. Several states have moved in recent years to clean outdated or offensive language out of their legal codes. Virginia launched a formal review of racist laws still on its books in 2019.

Massachusetts passed a bill in 2025 to remove outdated terms for people with disabilities from its statutes. These efforts reflect a growing push to make sure the language of the law matches its intent.

Protections stay the same with stronger enforcement

The law does not create new protections. Racial discrimination in life insurance was already illegal in Michigan.

What it does is bring the statute’s language up to current standards and raise the financial consequences for violations.

Residents who have concerns about discrimination in life insurance can reach out to the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services.

The updated Section 2082 is now part of Michigan’s compiled laws, and no further action is needed from regulators or insurers.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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