A win in court of public opinion
NURSE GARNERS SUPPORT FOR ‘I LOVE JK ROWLING’ SIGN
British Columbia nurse Amy Hamm concluded her formal litigation with the B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives on Tuesday, but looks set to continue her personal battle against the gender activism that has captured our institutions. If the #Istandwithamyhamm hashtag that’s trended on social media this week is anything to go by, she now has thousands in her corner, indicating a major shift in the political tide since she first ran afoul of the professional regulatory body 31/2 years ago.
Hamm unwittingly set off the years-long professional witch hunt in September 2020 when she helped set up a billboard expressing support for Harry Potter author and gender heretic J.K. Rowling. Her legal odyssey finally came to an end this week when closing arguments were heard in the matter of her alleged professional misconduct.
And while National Post readers may know Ms. Hamm for her recent think piece on the cultural impact of Hollywood starlet Sydney Sweeney’s bustline, she took the occasion as a chance to get a few things off her own chest.
“November 16, 2020: I got a letter saying that I was under investigation by @ Bcnursemidwife for my role in putting up an ‘I <3 JK Rowling’ billboard,” Hamm tweeted Tuesday evening. “I had recently become a single mom to a baby and a toddler. I felt my life was in pieces, personally and financially, and this letter nearly sent me over the edge.”
The lengthy post further outlined the lengths to which the college went to stack the deck against Hamm throughout the disciplinary process, calling the professional oversight body’s muscle-flexing “as astounding as it was terrifying.”
Hamm acknowledged, in the same post, the personal toll of the drawn-out litigation, calling the process “hell,” but also insisted that she willingly endured it “because the truth matters.”
“Women and children matter,” Hamm continued.
Hamm’s legal counsel Lisa Bildy explained the crux of the issue to me via email Wednesday morning: that off-hours advocacy unrelated to Hamm’s job falls outside the purview of the college.
“Amy Hamm showed immense courage throughout this ordeal. She took a principled position that her gender critical beliefs and advocacy for women’s rights in her off-duty hours should not be regulated or punished and had the fortitude to see this case through to the end,” she wrote.
The college’s investigation into Hamm’s off-duty conduct was triggered by two separate complaints lodged by members of the public over the billboard stunt — neither complainant had ever been a patient of hers. A 322-page report was subsequently compiled chronicling her public statements over a 32-month period, starting over two years before the billboard incident.
A citation published by the college in June 2022 laid out the charge against Hamm of repeatedly making “discriminatory and derogatory statements regarding transgender people, while identifying (herself) as a nurse or nurse educator,” over a period of roughly twoand-a-half years between the summer of 2018 and spring of 2021. The letter also indicated that Hamm’s hearing before the College’s disciplinary panel would start in September. During her own testimony in November, Hamm said the idea of gender identity is “anti-scientific,” but that she limits her “advocacy for changing policies to outside of work.”
The panel heard 20 days of testimony between September and October — a quarter of these dates were taken up by the college’s challenges to expert testimony presented by Hamm’s legal team (high-profile Toronto psychologist James Cantor was one of three experts who testified on Hamm’s behalf.)
This week’s closing arguments, which were open to the public via video conferencing, centred on whether Hamm being “publicly known” as a member of the nursing profession created a sufficient nexus between her off-the-clock speech and her professional obligations. B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives counsel Michael Seaborn conceded on Tuesday morning that the college erred when it stated earlier in the proceedings that Hamm identified herself as a nurse on her Twitter/x bio.
He nevertheless indicated that Hamm’s “self-identification” as a nurse in her public commentary gave the college sufficient grounds to pursue disciplinary action.
Bildy, however, posited a distinction, in her closing arguments, between Hamm’s (easily-searchable) profession being provided as background information in media appearances and Hamm using her professional credentials to add legitimacy to her activism; insisting that her client “at no time” purported to speak on gender issues from a position of medical expertise.
While secondary to the case itself, the issue of finding a more just balance between trans accommodation and the protection of women and girls in vulnerable single-sex spaces also came up at various points throughout the day.
“Trans people are not the only people in the country entitled to their dignity,” stated Bildy in her closing arguments.
This week’s events played out amid a political climate that appears to be warming to gender-critical viewpoints — several public figures who’ve previously been censured for expressing such views, including J.K. Rowling herself, have come back from “cancellation” in recent months, though Rowling was never really cancelled, despite the efforts of activists. Thousands expressed their support for Hamm online using the hashtag #Istandwithamyhamm. Rowling posted her own message of support for Hamm early Wednesday morning.
The conclusion of the disciplinary proceedings against Hamm also comes at a time when several of Canada’s leading conservative politicians are publicly embracing policies that limit access to gender medical and surgical procedures for minors, and that limit the access of trans persons to single-sex spaces.
During an appearance in Kitchener, Ont., last month, Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre stated unequivocally that “female spaces,” including change rooms, bathrooms and organized sports, should be “exclusively for females and not for biological males” — his strongest language to date on the matter. Just a few weeks earlier, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith introduced sweeping changes to the province’s gender accommodation policies, which included forbidding transgender women from participating in competitive women’s sports leagues.
Gone are the days when uttering the wrong word on trans accommodation could get someone “cancelled” — and good riddance to those days.
While Amy Hamm must now await the B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives’ final decision on the charges of professional misconduct levied against her, she appears to have already been fully exonerated in the court of public opinion.
And this is great news for anybody who believes in the value of free speech to society.