Hamilton Sues Port Angeles School District, Alleging Retaliation, Prior Restraint, and Open Meetings Violations

Port Angeles School District Director Nancy Hamilton has taken her fight with the board majority to court.

In a complaint filed Tuesday afternoon in Clallam County Superior Court, Hamilton asks a judge to declare Resolution 2526-18, the censure the board adopted 4-1 on June 18, "arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law," and to find that the board violated the Washington Open Public Meetings Act.

The 16-page complaint, filed by Seattle education-law firm Cedar Law LLP, names the district and its Board of Directors as defendants and brings six causes of action: a direct statutory appeal of the censure under RCW 28A.645.010; claims for injunctive and declaratory relief; federal First Amendment retaliation and prior-restraint claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983; a parallel free-speech claim under Article I, Section 5 of the Washington Constitution; and alleged violations of the Open Public Meetings Act, Chapter 42.30 RCW.

State law gave Hamilton 30 days to appeal the board's decision to superior court. She filed on day 26.

The 'Gag Rule' Goes to Court

At the center of the lawsuit is Section 3.2 of the censure resolution, the new information-request protocol the Herald detailed in our coverage of the June 18 meeting.

Under that protocol, if Superintendent Michelle Olsen deems an individual director's requests for information "so voluminous, complex, and/or repetitive as to disrupt district operations," she is directed to forward them to the board president, who places them on the next board meeting agenda for discussion and approval by the full board. 

Requests that fail to win approval are disregarded. The board wrote the same restriction into Olsen's new 2026-2029 employment contract, at Paragraph 7, approved 4-1 the same night over Hamilton's objections.

Hamilton's complaint argues that this arrangement is an unconstitutional prior restraint. 

An elected official, it contends, cannot be forced to route her oversight questions through multiple layers of approval, including a majority vote of the same board that censured her, before district staff will answer them.

The suit alleges the censure was retaliation for constitutionally protected conduct: advocating for transparency on behalf of constituents, asking questions of the superintendent as directed by board policy, and voicing her need for more information before voting. 

That included the reduction in force of district paraeducators that the board approved in May over her objection.

The complaint quotes the district's own Policy 1010, which lists "Requests Information" among the duties of the board itself.

Inside the May 26 Executive Session

The filing offers Hamilton's most detailed account yet of the May 26 executive session that became the basis for the most serious accusation against her.

The session's stated purpose was to discuss pending and potential litigation with legal counsel. That purpose is permitted under RCW 42.30.110(1)(i), the OPMA exception that lets a governing body meet behind closed doors with its attorney.

According to the complaint, the first ten minutes included the district's counsel, Heidi Maynard, attempting to intimidate Hamilton with the possibility of future litigation, which the complaint dismisses as frivolous. 

The session, it alleges, was largely used to berate Hamilton for asking too many questions and disrupting the board's established culture.

The complaint calls the meeting an "ambush disguised as an executive session."

Hamilton's lawyers argue that a session actually devoted to complaints about a public officer falls under a different provision of the OPMA, RCW 42.30.110(1)(f), which gives that officer the right to demand the meeting be open to the public. 

Hamilton subsequently requested an open meeting, the complaint alleges, and has never been given one.

The Letter, the Censure, and a Privilege Problem

On June 11, Hamilton emailed a letter to the four other directors and Maynard, the people the complaint identifies as the attendees of the May 26 session. 

The letter responded to the accusations she says were leveled at her there, among them her recusal on the certificated staff collective bargaining agreement vote (her husband, the complaint notes, belongs to that unit), her refusal to name a constituent who feared retribution, and her practice of explaining her votes in public session.

According to the complaint, that letter is what prompted the other four directors to censure her one week later. 

The board majority accused Hamilton of breaching executive-session confidentiality and, per the complaint, of committing a criminal misdemeanor by "creating a public record subject to disclosure by the District."

The complaint then turns the district's own records production against it.

On July 8, the district released Hamilton's letter in its entirety in response to a public records request. 

As we reported that day, the letter arrived as the first installment of records responsive to our June 22 Public Records Act request.

By releasing the letter, the complaint argues, the district waived any claim of attorney-client privilege over it and apparently agreed with Hamilton's characterization that whatever happened on May 26 fell outside the proper scope of an executive session.

New Open Meetings Allegations

The lawsuit also levels OPMA claims that reach beyond the censure itself.

It alleges that a majority of the board met privately through "serial meetings" conducted by phone and email under the guise of "agenda meetings," and that the board privately discussed topics beyond what its meeting announcements disclosed.

It also adds a new allegation about the June 18 meeting. We reported that night that President Sandy Long twice called five-minute recesses amid audience outbursts. 

The complaint alleges that twice, when community members expressed dissatisfaction with the resolution, Long relocated the board members to an enclosed room. 

Once behind closed doors, the complaint alleges, other directors continued to harass Hamilton, demanding, "Is this what you wanted?" and pressing her about whether she knew the public commenters.

Every public comment at that meeting supported Hamilton, the complaint notes. That account is consistent with our reporting from the packed Lincoln Center that night.

The Board's Side of the Ledger

The censure resolution tells a very different story, and the lawsuit will have to overcome it.

The eight-page resolution accuses Hamilton of sending Olsen 17 emails over five months containing burdensome information requests (one with 56 separate questions), of making inaccurate public statements that impugned the integrity of the superintendent and fellow directors, and of breaking state law by disclosing executive-session details in her June 11 letter.

Hamilton denies wrongdoing and has said she received legal guidance that she broke no laws.

The resolution also insists that Hamilton "retains all rights and powers of her office without diminution," a characterization her lawsuit squarely disputes.

Notably, the board appears to have anticipated a constitutional challenge. The resolution itself cites U.S. Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit precedent on censures of elected officials, including Houston Community College System v. Wilson, the 2022 decision holding that a purely verbal censure of an elected official by his colleagues does not, by itself, give rise to a First Amendment retaliation claim. 

The Wilson court was careful to say it was not deciding cases in which a censure comes paired with a material punishment. 

Hamilton's suit alleges exactly that kind of pairing: a reprimand plus concrete restrictions on her ability to gather information and do the job she was elected to do.

What Hamilton Wants

Hamilton is an Army veteran who served as a medic, a descendant of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, and the board's only Native American director. 

She won election last November on a platform of transparency and accountability, unseating an incumbent by about 13 points. 

Her complaint renews her allegation that her minority voice is being silenced, a claim the board majority has forcefully rejected as baseless.

In a June 17 radio interview cited in the complaint, Hamilton warned that the resolution would "strip me of my core duties and diminish my capacity to serve."

Her lawsuit asks the court to suspend Resolution 2526-18 and declare it void as if it had never existed; to declare the censure an unconstitutional prior restraint under state and federal law; to find that the board violated the Open Public Meetings Act; to enjoin future violations; and to award costs and attorney's fees under RCW 42.30.120(4) and 42 U.S.C. § 1988. The federal civil-rights claim also seeks damages.

Hamilton remains a sitting director. The district has not yet responded to the lawsuit in court.