Clallam County Superior Court’s Media Freeze-Out

When a government institution faces intense public scrutiny, its fundamental constitutional obligation is to maintain transparency. Clallam County Superior Court, however, appears to have chosen a different path.

Presiding Judge Barnhart has failed to rein in former Presiding Judge Basden’s staff, who are actively freezing out critics in the press while rewarding compliant corporate media with exclusive access.

Despite serving as the primary reporting outlet of the local judiciary, The Olympic Herald is being actively excluded from the court’s official media communications.

At the same time, the court has engaged in the systematic censorship and ultimate destruction of its Facebook page, which has prevented the community from engaging with the court online.

Media Censorship

The timeline of the court’s actions is stark and well-documented. On Wednesday, February 11, The Olympic Herald formally requested to be added to the court administration’s media distribution list.

Exactly one week later, on February 18, 2026, Court Administrator Lacey Halberg distributed an official press release regarding the passing of retired Judge Lauren Erickson.

Judge Erickson was a historic figure in Clallam County—the first woman to serve on the Superior Court bench and a public servant remembered for her warmth and dedication to the community.

Having observed numerous hearings she presided over, it was clear she possessed a rigorous understanding of the law, a patient demeanor with litigants, and a commitment to ensuring everyone in her courtroom felt heard and respected.

One would expect that in a moment of genuine community loss, court administrators would prioritize ensuring the entire region could honor the legacy of such a respected jurist. Instead, they chose this solemn occasion to execute a petty, retaliatory blackout.

The email was sent to a curated list of local media: the Peninsula Daily News, the Forks Forum-Herald, KONP, and the Sequim Gazette. The Olympic Herald—the publication that covers the court’s administrative functions more closely than any other outlet in the region—was entirely absent from the recipient line.

This explicit exclusion comes in the immediate wake of The Herald’s rigorous coverage of the court. That reporting sparked widespread community protests and ultimately forced the termination of embattled former Court Commissioner Brian Parker.

The list of outlets the court did choose to communicate with is highly revealing. Three of the four recipients—the Peninsula Daily News, the Sequim Gazette, and the Forks Forum—are entirely controlled by Carpenter Media Group, an out-of-state corporate conglomerate.

To be clear, these publications are staffed by dedicated, hardworking local reporters who genuinely care about their communities. However, their newsrooms have been gutted, and their editorial capabilities are severely restrained by their out-of-state corporate bosses.

This corporate restraint was fully on display when this same network of papers instituted a de facto media blackout regarding the criminal investigation and background of Brian Parker. They possessed the resources to cover the story, but constrained by their corporate ownership, they looked the other way.

A Designated Channel for Information, Not a Tool for Retaliation

While the press does not possess a constitutional right to information that is entirely unavailable to the general public, the government’s ability to selectively grant access to established media channels is severely restricted.

As the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has long affirmed, “newsgathering is an activity protected by the First Amendment,” which includes the “right of access for the press to observe government activities.”

When a government agency creates a formal mechanism for distributing information—such as a media distribution list—it establishes a designated channel for the press.

In the foundational press access case Sherrill v. Knight, 569 F.2d 124 (D.C. Cir. 1977), federal courts established that the government cannot arbitrarily deny press access to a bona fide journalist. Excluding a specific, credentialed news outlet without a compelling, neutrally applied administrative reason violates the core tenets of the First Amendment.

The Frantic Scramble to Censor the Digital Public Square

The court’s hostility toward critical viewpoints has not been limited to the press, but has also extended to the Clallam County public.

During the exact same week that the Herald was kept off the media list, the court administration was actively manipulating its official Facebook page to silence dissenting constituents who were outraged over the Brian Parker scandal.

The United States Supreme Court has explicitly recognized that social media platforms like Facebook provide “perhaps the most powerful mechanisms available to a private citizen to make his or her voice heard.”

In Packingham v. North Carolina, the Court emphasized that these digital forums allow individuals to “petition their elected representatives and otherwise engage with them in a direct manner.”

However, rather than fostering this democratic engagement, the Clallam County Superior Court actively tried to shut it down.

Internal emails reveal a frantic scramble on the morning of Friday, February 13. Deputy Court Administrator Kaysey Clayton sent an urgent message to the Clallam County IT Department, writing: “I tried to disable all comments but it will not give me access to do that. Can you please turn off ALL commenting immediately?”

She specifically requested that Court Administrator Lacey Halberg and Presiding Judge Simon Barnhart be notified the moment the digital gag order was executed.

When IT informed the court that there was no reliable way to globally shut off all public commenting on the page, the court pivoted to targeted censorship.

Halberg instructed IT to remove specific pictures from the page. The targeted post was from January 9, 2025, detailing the swearing-in of Judge Elizabeth Stanley—a post where the page administrator had already been utilizing Facebook’s “limit who can comment” feature to ensure only favorable praise was visible while locking out critical dissent.

Because individual photos could not be isolated from the comments, IT advised the only solution was to delete the entire post.

To justify this censorship, IT staff circulated Clallam County Policy 420, Section 9.4, which claims the county “reserves the right to limit or remove posted content at any time without notice” and prohibits “vulgar, offensive, threatening, harassing, anonymous, or profane content.”

By outlawing broadly “offensive” or “profane” speech, the county policy effectively outlaws the heated political and personal commentary that routinely occurs—and is fiercely protected by the Constitution—when citizens discuss government matters that outrage them.

When government officials use social media accounts for official purposes, they cannot silence users simply because they disagree with their perspectives.

In 2024, the Supreme Court affirmed in Lindke v. Freed that public officials can violate the First Amendment when censoring speech on social media.

Furthermore, in Leighty v. Spokane Cnty., the Eastern District of Washington held the government liable for damages after it violated the First Amendment by “hiding” critical comments on a local sheriff’s office Facebook page.

Clallam County Superior Court’s use of restrictive tools to hide critical comments operates under the exact same unconstitutional premise.

Viewpoint Discrimination

Whether manipulating a press distribution list to favor compliant corporate outlets or restricting a Facebook comment section to silence outraged constituents, the underlying constitutional violation is identical: viewpoint discrimination.

As the Second Circuit explained in Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, the First Amendment does not permit public officials who utilize a social media account “for all manner of official purposes” to exclude individuals from an open dialogue merely because they express differing opinions.

Nor can a government administrator rely on vague, overbroad policies prohibiting “disrespectful” or “inappropriate” comments to justify silencing critics, as established in Robinson v. Hunt Cty.

Just last month, in the case New York Times Company v. Department of Defense, U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman struck down a government press policy that attempted to weed out disfavored reporters.

He noted that leveraging administrative discretion to silence critics is “viewpoint discrimination, full stop.”

Rather than navigate the clear requirements of the First Amendment and cease its viewpoint-based censorship regarding the Brian Parker scandal, the Clallam County Superior Court ultimately chose the nuclear option: they deleted their entire Facebook page.

Transparency Under the Law

Government agencies do not have the luxury of curating their critics. The First Amendment was drafted to protect rigorous, adversarial, and occasionally uncomfortable civic engagement.

The Constitution does not allow a court administration to leverage its control over information to starve an independent publication of routine facts, nor does it allow them to destroy a public forum simply because the public is angry.

Operating under the law means facing scrutiny. In light of this documented pattern of viewpoint discrimination and First Amendment retaliation, the Olympic Herald is currently evaluating all available legal options to address these civil rights violations and compel the transparency the Constitution demands.

We will continue our sustained commitment to investigating, observing, and reporting on the Clallam County Superior Court, ensuring the public remains fully informed about the institutions operating in their name.