Opinion: The Port Angeles School Board’s Proposed Censure is a Constitutional Minefield
Tonight, the Port Angeles School District Board of Directors is scheduled to vote on Resolution 2526-18, a sweeping, eight-page formal censure aimed at newly elected Director Nancy Hamilton.
On the surface, the board majority and Superintendent Michelle Olsen have framed the reprimand as a necessary administrative measure to restore decorum and district efficiency.
The document reprimands Hamilton for “micromanagement”—citing her voluminous emails inquiring about district operations—and accuses her of breaching confidentiality following a controversial closed-door meeting.
If adopted, the resolution will not formally unseat Hamilton, who won her position by a decisive 13-point margin just last November.
But if you look past the board’s bureaucratic hand-wringing over her inquiries into school bus mileage, capital projects, and a $23,700 contract change-order, the fine print of the resolution reveals something far more alarming.
The board is not merely attempting to formally express its political disapproval of a colleague.
By maneuvering to unilaterally restrict an elected official’s access to information and explicitly threatening to bar her from future executive sessions, the board is marching the district straight into a constitutional minefield.
In doing so, the authors of Resolution 2526-18 are ignoring bedrock First Amendment jurisprudence and fundamental free speech protections enshrined in the Washington State Constitution.
A Legal Sleight-of-Hand: Misreading the Courts
To legally insulate itself, the board’s resolution proudly cites two major court decisions: the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court case Houston Community College System v. Wilson and the 2010 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case Blair v. Bethel School District.
The board points to these cases as a blank check for its actions, noting that a censure is merely the board exercising its own protected “counter-speech.”
On a narrow, technical level, they are right.
In Wilson, a unanimous Supreme Court led by Justice Neil Gorsuch ruled that a purely verbal censure of an elected official does not violate the First Amendment.
Similarly, in Blair, the Ninth Circuit ruled that a school board could lawfully vote to remove an outspoken member from the internal, titular role of board vice president without violating his free speech rights, as it was part of the normal political process.
But the Port Angeles School Board appears to have stopped reading these opinions halfway through.
Both rulings drew a sharp, unmistakable line: while verbal reprimands or removals from internal leadership roles are permissible, a board crosses into unconstitutional retaliation if its actions prevent an elected official from actually doing the job they were elected to do.
In upholding the Houston censure, Justice Gorsuch explicitly noted, “The censure did not prevent Mr. Wilson from doing his job, it did not deny him any privilege of office.”
The Ninth Circuit in Blair emphasized the exact same caveat, noting that the disciplined board member’s rights were intact precisely because he retained the full privileges of his elected office—he could still vote, speak, and access the materials necessary to govern.
Resolution 2526-18 leaps headlong over that constitutional line.
Section 3.2 decrees that if Superintendent Olsen subjectively deems Hamilton’s future requests for information to be “voluminous, complex, and/or repetitive,” those requests will be forwarded to the Board President and entirely disregarded by staff unless explicitly approved by a majority vote of the full board.
Information is the lifeblood of democratic oversight. You cannot evaluate, debate, or vote on what you are not allowed to see.
By creating an administrative bottleneck that forces an elected official to ask permission from her political rivals just to review district finances or basic operations, the board is imposing a materially adverse action that fundamentally impairs her legislative privileges.
This is not a purely verbal censure—it is a functional gag rule.
As the U.S. Supreme Court unequivocally ruled in Bond v. Floyd (1966), the First Amendment requires that elected representatives be given the widest possible latitude to express their views and investigate policy.
You cannot grant a representative that latitude while simultaneously cutting off her access to the district’s books.
Prior Restraint: A Fatal Constitutional Flaw
The board’s most glaring legal miscalculation, however, is found in Section 7 of the resolution, which casually threatens to “seek injunctive relief in court to prevent Director Hamilton from attending future executive sessions.”
The board alleges that Hamilton violated the Open Public Meetings Act and state ethics codes by disclosing details of a May 26 executive session in a June 11 letter to the board and district counsel.
Hamilton—the board’s only Native American director—countered in her letter that the session was improperly convened “under the guise of potential litigation” in an effort to discredit her and “silence minority voices.” (The board vehemently denies this, calling her claim “false and offensive.”)
Whether Hamilton breached confidentiality is a matter of fierce factual and legal dispute. But if the board genuinely believes Hamilton broke the law, there are appropriate statutory mechanisms to address it after the fact.
Threatening a court injunction to physically lock a duly elected official out of the room where vital district decisions, litigation risks, and personnel matters are discussed is a textbook example of “prior restraint”—historically recognized as the most severe and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.
Prior restraint occurs when the government preemptively prohibits speech, expression, or the information-gathering necessary for such speech, before it can even happen.
The U.S. Supreme Court has looked harshly upon prior restraints for nearly a century, solidifying the principle in landmark cases like Near v. Minnesota (1931) and the Pentagon Papers case (New York Times Co. v. United States, 1971).
Preemptively banning a legislator from a meeting because you fear she might speak about it afterward operates as the ultimate prior restraint on her legislative duties.
But the federal Constitution is only half of the district’s problem.
The Ironclad Protections of the Washington Constitution
When it comes to free speech and prior restraint, the Washington State Constitution is unequivocally unforgiving. Article I, Section 5 declares: “Every person may freely speak, write and publish on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right.”
The Washington State Supreme Court has consistently held that this provision offers far broader protections than the federal First Amendment, establishing a near-absolute ban on prior restraints.
In the landmark 1984 case State v. Coe, the state Supreme Court cemented the principle that the state cannot constitutionally forbid speech or civic participation before it occurs.
This was forcefully reaffirmed in In re Marriage of Suggs (2004), where the court ruled that even defamatory or harmful speech cannot be preemptively gagged by a court order.
The language of Article I, Section 5 is critical here: citizens are “responsible for the abuse of that right.” This means the government can punish an abuse of free speech or a breach of ethics laws after it occurs, but it cannot constitutionally forbid the access and the speech beforehand.
Seeking an injunction to strip an elected official of her right to attend and participate in executive sessions is a legally doomed endeavor under Washington law.
It acts as a direct prior restraint on her legislative duties and unconstitutionally nullifies the will of the voters who placed her on the dais.
A Dangerous Precedent for Transparency
Democratic oversight is often messy, tedious, and politically uncomfortable. Hamilton’s 56-question emails and relentless inquiries may indeed cause administrative headaches for district staff.
Tensions regarding state guidelines on “micromanagement” versus diligent financial oversight are common growing pains for any newly seated board.
But the remedy for political friction is not constitutional subversion.
Let me be clear: if the Port Angeles School Board wishes to express its collective disapproval of Nancy Hamilton’s oversight style or her public statements, they have every right to pass a purely verbal resolution tonight.
That is their constitutionally protected right to counter-speech. No elected official is immune from the criticism of their peers.
But weaponizing district protocol to block an elected representative’s access to operational information, and explicitly threatening court injunctions to lock her out of executive sessions, constitutes a gross abuse of power that defies both state and federal precedent.
A school board cannot suspend the Constitution just because they find democratic oversight disruptive.
If the board adopts Resolution 2526-18 as written, they won’t just be alienating a large segment of their community. They will be actively inviting a disastrous, high-profile civil rights lawsuit that taxpayers will ultimately finance—and one the district is legally destined to lose.
Right on! Good points. I’m wondering if this has a bit to do with the personalities involved enhancing the actual behaviors on both sides.
Sounds like the "old guard" at the school board doesn't like the new person trying to find ways to make things better. Maybe the citizens want a little new blood based on the fact that Director Hamilton trounced her opponent in the election!