Federal court decides in favor of retired engineer told by state to not talk about math in public

FlumPHP@programming.dev to Not The Onion@lemmy.world – 520 points –
Federal court decides in favor of retired engineer told by state to not talk about math in public
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When it comes to titles like this that are considered protected, it is actually how they work.

In your example, he isn't allowed to use that title in the new state until he's joined their organization (or they have an agreement with his original state)

As an extreme example for why the timing does matter, If he was licensed properly for 1 year, then let it lapse but continued to do design work as an engineer for 25 years, and then relicensed himself for one last year before retiring, the work he did during that period of being unlicensed isn't covered, and the board of engineers would go after him for that.

For what it's worth, there are specific provisions in the laws to allow retired people to continue using the title P.Eng with a "Retired" tag added onto it.

Just read the opinion. He was allowed to practice engineering under an exception and never joined the org.

Then he started critiquing work, and opposing council tried to negate his analysis by saying, hey you can't practice engineering.

So the title isn't that protected, but various people tried to make it seem like it would be, and a greater court decided that infringes his rights.

You're looking at the original article. This whole series of comments has been spawned off a discussion about a different case, in which the person did join the organization, then let his license lapse.

In the original, I agree. He never required a license because of their own regs( though it appears that also means he couldn't call himself a professional engineer, so the title itself is protected, he was just exempt from needing the license to do the industrial work he was doing). He is then totally within his rights to use that knowledge and pass himself off as a subject matter expert in the same field he worked for X years, and the board just got pissy. Glad it was overturned for him.

My mistake, I was checking if he actually used it in the context of practicing engineering, and he didn't there was a biography on his blog and some other slide.