A court in North Carolina has just ruled that it is legal for a man to talk about math in public, WND reports.

The bizarre case involves Wayne Nutt and the North Carolina Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors (NCBEES), the state’s engineer licensing agency.

Since his retirement as a corporate engineer, Nutt has commented, sometimes critically, on public works engineering projects in the state.

This resulted in the government telling Nutt that he could not make these public statements without having an engineering license issued by the agency.

Here is the kicker.

Nutt is a qualified engineer and has worked in that capacity for most of his career. But, because he worked in the corporate sector, he was not required to get a license.

The problem came to a head when Nutt allegedly used math while commenting on a piping project that resulted in homes being flooded.

After he was threatened with legal action, with the help of the Institute of Justice (IJ), Nutt successfully sued the government. The court ruled that the government had violated Nutt’s First Amendment rights.

“At its core, this case concerns the extent to which a law-abiding citizen may use his technical expertise to offer a dissenting perspective against the government,” the judge noted.

“State licensing boards nationwide increasingly act as if they are boards of censors, deciding who may or may not speak about the topics they regulate,” said Joe Gay, the IJ lawyer representing Nutt in the case.

“Today’s ruling is a powerful reminder that in this country we rely on people to decide who they want to listen to. We don’t rely on government boards to decide who gets to speak,” Gray added.