An Update on the Strong Towns Lawsuit
Many of you have been following our ongoing legal action against the Minnesota board of engineering licensing, which has attempted to fine and censure me for speaking up for reform in the engineering profession. As always, we appreciate all the gestures of concern and support. Here is a brief update as to where we stand right now.
The dispute that we have with the licensing board is now in the court of appeals. As such, it is now officially Minnesota v. Marohn. We are done debating whether or not the licensing board’s complaint process can be weaponized to intimidate engineers who speak out for reform (it can). To clean up that mess and give reformers a little bit of room to stand up, we are now debating the limits of state power overall.
Can the state of Minnesota, under the guise of “trade regulations and consumer protection,” sanction an individual merely for suggesting they were qualified to perform a regulated activity, even if that person does not perform, or even offer to perform, such an activity?
Of course, there is a ton of nuance in this case, but that is what this dispute has now been reduced to. It’s bizarre, especially when one considers that I only do advocacy work—essentially speech, nothing the state can regulate—but I was, and remain to this day, fully qualified to have an engineering license. Mine had just temporarily lapsed.
As our legal team stated in our most recent filing:
“[According to the licensing board] If Marohn’s license were to lapse again in the future, and he were not to immediately hunt down every reference to himself in books he authored and published, online, from youtube videos, to social media posts, to websites, that used the term ‘professional engineer’ or ‘P.E.’ would subject Marohn to discipline under the statute. This absurd result in no way furthers the stated aims of the legislature.” (Page 19)
Absurd indeed. Our legal team has raised the central question of this phase of the dispute:
“The only interest the State of Minnesota has in licensing engineers is to ensure persons practicing engineering are competent and ethical while performing or offering to perform engineering services—what other interest could the State have?” (Page 20)
We should all be bewildered by the state’s response. According to their most recent filing, “Professional Engineer” is not just a license one obtains to perform technical work regulated by the state. Rather, the terms “Professional Engineer” and “PE” are tradenames that people use to advertise their availability to practice engineering. From the state’s most recent response:
“…the use of the tradename (or in this case the professional title) alone is itself an advertisement that the person can perform the services in question. Indeed … the use of the title in conjunction with his name is itself an advertisement.” (Page 13)
This is what I meant when I called the state licensing board a “cartel,” the definition of which is, “an association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition.”
According to the state of Minnesota, if someone merely calls themselves a “professional engineer,” they are using a tradename protected by the state for the benefit of license holders. There is no public purpose here, no aspect of “consumer protection.” You call yourself a “professional engineer” and you are advertising, whether you are soliciting work or not, whether you do any engineering work or not.
Use the term “PE” and you are advertising services in direct competition with people who have a license. The state can’t allow that.
As I said, we’re in the bizarre stage of the legal argument process. There is a ton more—like how the state of Minnesota repeats endlessly that my license temporarily and inadvertently lapsing is actually me intentionally deceiving the public about my credentials. I did that, I guess, by not having the prescience to remove the letters “PE” after my name on the title slide of a PowerPoint (when I was unaware that my license had accidentally lapsed).
You can read it all for yourself. The two most recent fillings, and all the information on this saga, are always available at strongtowns.org/supportreform.
(Cover image via Pixabay.)
Traffic studies read like dry, technocratic products that follow some scientific process. In reality, they often use selective data and unrealistic projections to promote road projects with the veneer of technical expertise.