This isn’t quite the full story. The OP is editorialized clickbait. The engineer wasn’t just “criticizing” NC infrastructure, he was testifying in a lawsuit against it, and the defense complained about it to the NC board of examiners for engineers because he did not have a license. The board then sent him a letter saying they were investigating him for practicing engineering without a license.
“Wayne’s troubles began when he agreed to help his son, Kyle, a North Carolina attorney, with a case about a piping system that allegedly flooded a few local homes. In his deposition, Wayne testified truthfully that he was not (and never had been) a licensed engineer. In fact, like the majority of engineers nationwide, Wayne was not required to get a license since he worked for a company under the state’s “industrial exception,’” according to the Institute of Justice.
This isn’t quite the full story. The OP is editorialized clickbait. The engineer wasn’t just “criticizing” NC infrastructure, he was testifying in a lawsuit against it, and the defense complained about it to the NC board of examiners for engineers because he did not have a license. The board then sent him a letter saying they were investigating him for practicing engineering without a license.
Source: https://www.wect.com/2021/06/10/retired-wilmington-engineer-files-federal-lawsuit-against-state-board-claims-first-amendement-violations/ (on the same site, linked in the OP)
So it’s still stupid, but it’s not as stupid as the OP is making it out to be (for those sweet sweet clicks).
I mean, it’s the headline, which completes the final layer of the onion