Can an Engineer Speak Out for Reform?

In February 2015, I wrote a column with the title, “Can You Be an Engineer and Speak Out for Reform?” At the time, another professional engineer had filed a complaint with the state licensing board against me over things I had written here at Strong Towns.

I had been critical of the engineering profession, particularly the way engineers approach transportation spending and public safety. I had questioned the endless expansion of highways, challenged the way engineers design streets, and coined the term “stroad” to describe the dangerous environments that result when we apply highway design principles to places where people live. The complaint alleged that I had engaged in professional misconduct for writing these things.

The Minnesota licensing board investigated the complaint and ultimately found no violation. They also warned me that the file could be reopened “should additional evidence warrant” doing so. So, the question remained unanswered. Can a professional engineer speak critically about the engineering profession without putting their license at risk?

Eleven years later, after that same licensing board followed up on that veiled threat and took action against me, we finally have an answer.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ruled that the Minnesota licensing board violated the First Amendment when it applied the state's professional licensing restrictions to my public advocacy. The state can regulate the practice of engineering. It can punish engineers who practice without a license and discipline licensed engineers who engage in incompetent or unethical professional work. What it cannot do is use that authority to regulate what an engineer says as part of a public policy discussion merely because that person draws upon their engineering credentials and experience.

We won.

It took six years of litigation to get that ruling, including an administrative proceeding, an appeal through the Minnesota courts, and two trips to federal court. Along the way, I lost more than once. I also learned a great deal about free speech, the legal profession, and what it costs to challenge an institution with the power to determine whether someone can continue earning a living in their chosen profession.

I haven't practiced engineering since 2012. I don't design roads, sign plans, prepare specifications, or perform any other work requiring an engineering license. I continued to maintain my license, however, until I inadvertently missed a renewal in 2018. I didn't discover the lapse until June 2020, at which point I immediately applied for reinstatement. I had maintained my continuing education, met all the qualifications for renewal, and the licensing board reinstated my license.

What I didn't know was that a second engineer who objected to my advocacy had already discovered the lapse and filed a complaint against me. The licensing board had received that complaint months before reinstating my license, but I wasn't informed about it until more than a month after my license had been renewed.

Again, there was no allegation that I had practiced engineering without a license. The complaint documented my speech: articles I had written, talks I had given, videos I had appeared in, and places where I described myself as a professional engineer. Because I had not practiced engineering since 2012, the lapse had not legally prevented me from doing any of my professional work. My work then, as now, involved advocating for public policy reform through my writing, public speaking, and leadership of the Strong Towns movement.

This time, however, the licensing board did not dismiss the complaint. They aggressively pursued enforcement.

At first, the board asked the questions you would expect a licensing board to ask. Had I performed any engineering projects while my license was expired? Had I signed any plans? Had I otherwise practiced engineering without a license? The answer to all of these questions was no, I had not performed any professional engineering work while my license was expired. There was no evidence of it because it never happened, a fact the board ultimately acknowledged during the litigation. 

Yet, the investigation continued. When I appeared before the board's complaint committee, the questions weren't about engineering work. They were about my public advocacy. Committee members asked about a TEDx talk I had given. They asked about an appearance at an event hosted by The American Conservative magazine, a Talks at Google presentation I gave, podcasts I had done, and about other places where I had spoken publicly. One committee member questioned what would happen if people gave greater weight to what I was saying because I identified myself as a professional engineer.

Of course they might. That's the whole point.

I earned an engineering degree. I worked under licensed engineers for four years, passed the professional engineering exam, obtained my license, and spent years practicing as a civil engineer in communities across Minnesota. That experience is inseparable from the things I write and say today. I know how traffic projections are developed because I worked with them. I know how streets and infrastructure projects are designed because I designed them. I know how engineering standards shape decisions made by local governments because I spent years making those decisions with local officials.

My experience as an engineer is a large part of what led me to question the profession's conventional practices in the first place.

The licensing board ultimately issued a finding that I had misrepresented myself to the public. They censured and reprimanded me and fined me $1,500. We challenged that decision, first through the state administrative and appellate process and ultimately in federal court. The full chronology is complicated, so I've put together a timeline for anyone who wants to understand the full six-year legal journey.

What matters now is where we ended up. The federal court drew a clear distinction between the practice of engineering and public advocacy about engineering. The state has every right to regulate the former. If anyone offers engineering services without a license, signs plans they are not qualified to sign, or performs engineering work incompetently or unethically, the licensing board should act. Nothing in this ruling diminishes that authority.

But writing an article about traffic safety is not the practice of engineering. Questioning a traffic projection at a public meeting is not the practice of engineering. Criticizing a highway expansion, challenging an industry standard, or arguing that an infrastructure investment doesn't make financial sense is not the practice of engineering. These are public policy discussions, and engineers have the same First Amendment right to participate in them as everyone else. 

The court decision makes clear what should always have been obvious: the state licensing board's authority to regulate the practice of engineering does not give it authority to regulate an engineer's participation in public policy debates. 

That distinction matters far beyond my case. Professional engineers have enormous influence over public policy. They develop the traffic projections used to justify highway expansions. They establish the standards used to design our streets. They advise local officials on infrastructure investments involving millions, sometimes billions, of public dollars. Their professional judgments shape how our communities develop, how much debt we take on, and whether the places we build are safe for the people who live there.

We need engineers willing to speak openly when their professional judgment tells them something is wrong.

For years, I have heard from engineers who support the critiques we make at Strong Towns but are reluctant to say so publicly. They approach me after a presentation or send me a private email. They describe conversations taking place among colleagues in offices and break rooms, conversations where everyone recognizes that a traffic projection is absurd, that a design is dangerous, or that an infrastructure investment makes no financial sense. Then everyone goes back to work and things move ahead without the benefit of that uncomfortable professional insight, not because it isn't valuable, but because the professionals who have it are afraid to speak up. 

Years ago, Strong Towns even created a pseudonym, R. Moses, so that professional engineers could write for Strong Towns without putting their names on criticisms that might create problems with an employer, a colleague, or a licensing board. We had engineers with valuable things to say about their own profession who believed the prudent way to say them was anonymously.

I understand that prudence. Engineering is a profession built on reputation. A practicing engineer depends on clients, employers, colleagues, and the public having confidence in their professional judgment. A complaint to a licensing board alleging dishonesty or professional misconduct is not a trivial matter, even when the complaint is ultimately dismissed. For someone whose livelihood depends on maintaining a professional license, merely going through the process can impose enormous professional and personal costs.

We felt a responsibility to pursue this decision because of the unusually fortunate position I am in. I don't depend on my engineering license to earn a living. I had the support of the Strong Towns board, our members, and attorneys willing to stay with a difficult case through six years of litigation. For a practicing engineer with a career, a mortgage, a family, and an employer who would rather not be associated with controversy, the calculation is different. Staying quiet can be the rational choice. 

That is a terrible outcome for the engineering profession, and an even worse one for the public. Engineering advances when engineers are allowed to openly question assumptions, examine failures, challenge established practices, and learn from outcomes that don't match what their models predicted. A profession where disagreement happens privately but conformity is rewarded publicly loses one of its most important sources of feedback. Mistakes become standards and assumptions become dogma. Practices that may have made sense under one set of circumstances continue long after those circumstances have changed.

Ultimately, the public pays the price. That is the sad irony here: professional licensing is ostensibly there to protect the public, not the profession being licensed.

Let’s be clear: I don't want engineers to speak up because I expect them to agree with me. I want them to speak up even though I expect many of them to disagree with me. They should challenge Strong Towns. They should challenge the arguments I make in my books and articles. They should challenge transportation reformers when they think reformers have gotten something wrong, just as they should be invited to challenge their employers, professional organizations, industry standards, and government agencies.

We don't need an engineering profession that speaks with one voice. We need a profession confident enough in its standing to disagree with itself in public. That is what makes last week's ruling so important. The court did not decide that my criticisms of the engineering profession are correct. It did something much more fundamental. It affirmed that the state's authority to regulate professional practice does not give it authority to police the public debate those professionals participate in.

That distinction needed to be clearly established, which is why, for the past six years, Strong Towns and our attorneys, with the generous support of our members and others dedicated to this cause, kept pursuing this case. I am grateful to everyone who made it possible for us to keep going. I’m especially grateful to my family — my wife and two daughters — who lived this experience with me and carried more of the burden than they should have had to.

I'm so relieved this is over.

In 2015, the question was: Can an engineer speak out for reform? A federal court has now answered that question.

Yes.

Now, what will make this all worth it is if more engineers actually do.