Government Threatens Retired Engineer Wayne Nutt With a Crime for Doing Math

[Someone]

By giving expert testimony the regulatory board says that is undertaking engineering practice which is restricted, while the other side has jumped at free speech as a populist position to gloss over all the complexities. There has to be a line somewhere between practising that impacts the public, providing testimony in court is pretty clearly something that impacts the public.

Sometimes you need outsiders to say the emperor has no clothes and law seems to me the perfect place to do that ... how can judges and juries judge the accuracy of testimony without some board putting on their seal of approval? Well I guess they'll just have to do their best, lawyers for the other side are allowed to attack the credibility of testimony and present their own experts.

The alternative is to have zero recourse in questioning the decisions of incestuous groups of engineers.

Absolutely and it makes an interesting case for the courts to consider, should these other laws override the courts discretion. But its very little to do with free speech and absolutely not what people in this thread have been saying. There are significant differences from the previous Mats Jarlstrom example. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and after this case it might move in that very specific jurisdiction, for these very specific circumstances. Its not some general issue that affects many people.

[james_s]

I understand you frustration - and I share it to a point, but it comes down to a point where there are people that THINK they are competent ....

Sure but you will never stop those, the people who think they are competent but have no clue aren't going to let a requirement deter them. I've said this before, but you have to recognize that people are going to do this stuff anyway no matter what, so you can either provide the information and supplies to enable them to do it properly and hopefully get it signed off by an inspector, or you can prohibit it and people will do it anyway with whatever they can get their hands on with whatever knowledge they have and of course they won't get their illegal wiring inspected. It's the situation that results in people doing things like running lamp cord and extension cords through walls or using low voltage connectors on mains wiring. The people who think they're competent aren't going to hire an electrician whether they are actually competent or not. I've also cleaned up enough messes by supposedly competent professional electricians that I do not have the greatest confidence in them.

[Gregg]

Associations like the North Carolina board of examiners for engineers and surveyors were set up to protect their members from competition and to lobby for actual laws in their favor.  Note their website is .org not .gov: https://www.ncbels.org/
Basically they are only as official as the state laws (that they have basically paid for) allow.  The only way to keep an organization like this in check is through the courts. 
The fact that such organizations, corporations and even individuals can legally lobby and help elect government officials is a basic flaw in the governmental system that will probably never be fixed…..follow the money!