B.C. nurse Amy Hamm was back in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver this week, fighting the B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives over a $93,639.80 legal bill and the discipline ruling behind it. Her appeal hearing opened Tuesday, broke for Remembrance Day and was expected to conclude Friday, but it wrapped up a day early on Thursday.
Hamm is now waiting on a ruling that will have broad implications for the freedom of expression of professionals whose licences are governed by the B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives.
“I’m hopeful that we will get a ruling that upholds free speech for regulated professionals, who don’t deserve to be speech-policed in their spare time and forced to go along with state or regulator orthodoxy,” she told Rebel News.
Hamm wants the court to overturn the college’s decisions against her. The appeal argued that the discipline panel wrongly decided what counts as discriminatory speech, wrongly linked her off-duty comments to her nursing work, and failed to protect her Charter right to free expression.
Her lawyer, Lisa Bildy, put the core of it plainly on day one. According to CBC, she told Justice Jacqueline Hughes the panel had effectively ruled that “you cannot advocate for sex-based rights without including transgender women.”
Hamm’s troubles go back to 2020, when she helped fund an “I ♥ JK Rowling” billboard in Vancouver. Complaints to the college followed, including an anonymous one, and the college opened an investigation that dragged on through years of hearings.
In March 2025, a college panel ruled that four of her statements about sex and gender, made while she was a registered nurse, were unprofessional conduct. Vancouver Coastal Health fired her shortly afterward. That August, the panel ordered her to pay $93,639.80 toward the college’s legal costs and handed her a one-month suspension, to start if she ever returns to nursing. Both orders are on hold until the appeal is decided.
Hamm had been looking ahead to her day in court for some time.
