B.C. nurse fired over gender critical comments asks court to reverse decision

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A B.C. nurse who was fired for professional misconduct for posting statements about transgender people while identifying herself as a nurse has asked the B.C. Supreme Court to overturn the ruling.

About a week after a disciplinary hearing of the B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives ruled Amy Eileen Hamm had made “discriminatory” and “derogatory” statements that it called “untruthful and unfair as they challenge the existence of transgender women,” Hamm asked the court to reverse the ruling or send it back to the College panel to be reconsidered.

The college panel also said in its ruling in March that Hamm’s comments “argue for less constitutional protection for transgender women, and are designed, in part, to elicit fear, contempt and outrage against members of the transgender community.”

In 2020, Hamm commissioned an “I (heart) J.K. Rowling” billboard in Vancouver that drew instant rebuke and was taken down. The sign was similar to one in Scotland in support of Rowling, at a time when the U.K. author was embroiled in controversy over her views on female identity.

The nurses college was asked to investigate because Hamm made it clear she was a nurse in several social media posts that complainants described as transphobic.

“Although the statements did not directly concern health or nursing services, the respondent identified herself as a nurse or nurse educator in making them,” said the college.

In her 27-page case filed in court this week, Hamm was called a “longtime advocate of women’s rights, particularly with respect to the adverse impact of gender ideology on such rights,” said she has “never had a patient complaint,” or the issue has never been subject to discipline by her employer or the college.

It listed her several concerns about “gender identity ideology” and its “harmful effect” on women, children, gays and lesbians.

“She cannot, in good conscience, stand by and watch this happen without speaking up,” her case stated.

While Hamm argued it was a matter of freedom of speech and fair political comment, the members of the hearing panel disagreed — though they refused to discipline her for the statements she made where she didn’t refer to her job.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which provided legal support for Hamm, said the ruling was disappointing.

“This decision will negatively impact the freedom of expression of regulated professionals in British Columbia and across Canada,” it said in a statement after the college decision.

The centre also is representing her in the appeal.

Hamm’s lawyers argued her speech “was reasonable, sincere, socially valuable and scientifically supportable,” the centre said, and there was no evidence of discrimination or harm resulting from it.

The petition says the panel made eight errors, including that it “erred in law or mixed law and fact, in expanding the scope of the term ‘discriminatory’ to include disagreement with gender ideology and transgenderism generally and/or finding that the petitioner’s statements were discriminatory,” derogatory or unprofessional, the petition said.

And it “erred in law in finding that the use of sarcasm, mockery, derision or other ‘tone’ which the panel found unpalatable meant that the petitioner’s good faith intentions and the social value of her speech” was invalidated, the petition said.

And the panel’s ruling that advocating for the denial of legal protections based on gender is a form of “erasure” is an “ominous encroachment on freedom of expression in pluralistic Canada” which “effectively prevents” regulated professionals “from having a meaningful debate on an inherent conflict of rights,” it said.