Government Threatens Retired Engineer With a Crime for Doing Math

[mat200]

Government Threatens Retired Engineer With a Crime for Doing Math
Institute for Justice

Wayne Nutt is an engineer. He graduated with a degree in engineering and worked most of his career in North Carolina without ever needing a license to actually work as an engineer. But now, the North Carolina Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors is telling Wayne that speaking publicly about engineering without a state license could lead to criminal charges. Today, Wayne teamed up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to file a federal lawsuit to protect his First Amendment right to speak from his expertise and experience.

 

[tigerwillow1]

An almost identical thing happened a few years ago in Oregon. An EE crunched some numbers about red light camera timing and went public with them, also stating he was an engineer. The Oregon turds threatened and muzzled him because he wasn't licensed as an engineer by the state. He finally won.

After a two-year investigation, the board fined Mats $500 and said that he could not talk about traffic lights in public until he obtained a state-issued professional-engineer license. If Mats continued to “critique” traffic lights, he would face thousands of dollars in fines and up to one year in jail for the unlicensed practice of engineering. The board also said that Mats could not call himself an “engineer,” even though he has a degree in electrical engineering and decades of engineering experience. Like most engineers in Oregon, Mats is not a state-licensed “professional engineer,” and state law provided that only licensed professional engineers could legally use the title “engineer.”

Oregon Engineer Wins Traffic-Light Timing Lawsuit - Institute for Justice