The ACLU-WA’s legal department is working to expand and protect the civil rights and civil liberties guaranteed by our state constitution for all Washington residents.
In addition to filing lawsuits and contributing amicus briefs to vital cases, we offer Know Your Rights trainings across the state – recently in the Yakima Valley, Forks, Olympia, Wenatchee and Spokane – to help residents understand the impact of federal actions on immigrant rights, interactions with law enforcement, the right to protest, and much more.
Below is a sampling of our recent and ongoing court-based advocacy.
Lawsuit to prevent the Trump Administration from Dismantling Head Start
A coalition of parents and Head Start providers filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s coordinated and unlawful efforts to dismantle the Head Start program, which would be catastrophic for the millions of people who rely on it. By slashing staff, delaying funding, and imposing bans that block programs from fulfilling their mission to support young children from low-income families, the administration is defying Congress’s mandate to continue Head Start services nationwide. This multi-pronged attack endangers the critical early educational, health, nutritional, and social services that Head Start programs across the country provide to 800,000+ young children and their families every year.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Washington, the ACLU of Illinois, and the Impact Fund are representing the plaintiffs: parent groups Family Forward Oregon and Parent Voices Oakland, and the Head Start associations of Washington state, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is responsible for administering Head Start, including distributing federal funds, issuing program guidance, and ensuring grantee compliance with federal law. The complaint alleges that HHS unlawfully implemented the DOGE and anti-diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) executive orders by gutting the program of staff and resources, delaying access to funds, and issuing vague policies that ban core Head Start programing. These actions have already caused the suspension or termination of Head Start services and will lead to more program closures.
Filed Suit to Stop Initiative 2081
Last year, along with our partners at Legal Voice and QLaw Foundation, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of ten plaintiffs to prevent implementation of Initiative 2081, which was passed by the State Legislature last year and contains vague, misleading language that changes important laws designed to protect youth privacy. Its implementation would harm LGBTQ+ students, homeless students, youth of color, and students from other marginalized backgrounds. We won a key ruling last year in King County Superior Court to temporarily stop the harmful initiative from going into effect. In January, however, a King County Superior Court judge sided with the defendants, allowing the initiative to take effect. We are appealing the Court’s ruling.
In the meantime, the State Legislature passed several bills intended to address Initiative 2081’s harmful effects. In response, seven different initiatives have been filed to try to undo the legislative fixes. The ACLU-WA has filed ballot title challenges to these initiatives, citing concerns about inaccurate titles and summaries that mislead the electorate.
Al-Tharwa v. Yakima County
We filed a class action lawsuit against Yakima County over its failure to provide counsel to people charged with crimes in Yakima County Superior Court. We asked the Court to declare that charging, incarcerating, or holding someone on pretrial conditions of release are all unlawful restraints. Further, people are reaching their speedy trial expiration without having an attorney assigned. We asked the Court to also find that failure to appoint counsel is not a valid reason to extend speedy trial expirations and to find that continuing to charge people with cases that should have been dismissed is also an unlawful restraint.
Washington Community Alliance v. City of Seattle
In October, the ACLU-WA filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court challenging the Seattle City Attorney’s Office’s misuse of prosecutorial power, which resulted in an elected judge effectively being removed from the bench by a city attorney.
The case concerns a February 2024 mandatory policy by the City Attorney’s Office directing all assistant city attorneys to file an “affidavit of prejudice” against Judge Pooja Vaddadi on all criminal cases. Due to the City Attorney’s mandate, Judge Vadaddi’s role on the bench had been limited to addressing traffic and parking citations, a function typically performed by magistrate judicial officers, not elected judges. The policy effectively removed Judge Vaddadi from the position she was elected to by the voting public.
On February 7th, our case challenging the City Attorney’s policy was dismissed at the King County Superior Court. Despite the dismissal, the office of the City Attorney said at the hearing that they have implemented a new policy that no longer targets Judge Vaddadi, thus allowing her to return to the bench. It is our understanding that Judge Vaddadi is once again presiding over criminal matters at the Seattle Municipal Court — in part due to the pressure brought by our lawsuit. While we are thrilled with Judge Vaddadi’s return to the bench, we are appealing the dismissal.
State v. Olsen
The ACLU-WA, working with Civil Survival, wrote an amicus brief filed by the Washington Defender Association in State v. Olsen, a Washington State Supreme Court case regarding global resolutions. Global resolutions bundle several pending charges and cases together into a single resolution. This case will decide whether people who pled to drug possession charges later found unconstitutional in State v. Blake can withdraw other guilty pleas made as part of global resolutions. Our brief highlights how a person who faces multiple charges is under inherent coercive pressure to plead to global resolutions that bundle the pleas together. We also urge the Court to consider the historical racial disparity in the policing and prosecution of drug possession, as well as the collateral consequences that stem from these plea agreements which contained unconstitutional charges.
Does v. Sueoka
In May, along with the Korematsu Center and Clark County Justice Group, we filed an amicus brief in this case involving Public Records Act requests regarding Seattle Police Department officers who attended the January 6th insurrection. When members of the public sought the records from an investigation by the Office of Police Accountability, the officers sued to stop their release. The Court of Appeals found that releasing the records would chill First Amendment protected associations.
In our amicus brief, we argued that the governmental interest in accommodating community oversight in a situation that raised concerns about white supremacy among SPD officers outweighed their First Amendment interests: “To build trust and mitigate the harms inflicted upon communities of color, the government must facilitate community oversight of police,” our brief reads. “Community oversight in the present case means community members must be able to understand the officers’ roles in this rally, understand whether they are affiliated with white supremacist organizations, and judge whether the investigation into these officers was thorough and fair. That can only be achieved through disclosure of the officers’ names, their affiliation with white supremacist groups discovered through this investigation, and the officers’ observations of these organizations’ presence and role at the January 6 rally.” The Supreme Court sided with our position and held that the names had to be disclosed.
Protecting trans student athletes against discrimination
In January, the ACLU-WA sent a letter to the Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA), which was considering repealing a nearly two-decade-old state policy that respects the right of trans students to compete in sports consistent with their gender identity. Our letter pointed out that the longstanding policy is consistent with state law against discrimination, and we are prepared to take action to defend state law. “Attempts to restrict transgender girls from participating in sports conflict with the law and our core values as a state that prohibits discrimination,” said ACLU-WA Legal Director La Rond Baker. “These efforts violate student privacy and only exacerbate anxiety for a group of students who already face alarming rates of discrimination. Schools should be inclusive environments and state leaders should act to keep them that way.” After a legal review by the Washington state Attorney General’s office, which raised concerns that the proposed policy changes would potentially violate federal and state civil rights laws, the WIAA decided not to change its policies.
The ACLU-WA remains committed to protecting trans students from discrimination. Unfortunately, ongoing efforts — including a proposed ballot initiative — threaten to restrict transgender girls from participating in school sports. We recently filed a ballot title and summary challenge to Initiative No. IP25-419, a proposed initiative that would bar transgender girls from participating in school-sponsored sporting events and teams at public schools and colleges. By failing to use the word “transgender”, the Attorney General’s official title and summary (which will appear on voters’ ballots) is misleading about the intent of the initiative — to ban transgender girls from girls’ sports – and does a disservice to the electorate. There are two other initiatives that seek to ban transgender girls from sports. We are preparing to file ballot title challenges to each of those initiatives.
Aubry McMahon v. World Vision, Inc.
We filed an amicus brief in October in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit arguing that the district court correctly decided that Aubry McMahon’s employer World Vision, Inc. violated Title VII and Washington anti-discrimination law by refusing to follow through with an employment offer after learning she was married to a woman. World Vision, a religiously affiliated non-profit, argued that McMahon’s same-sex marriage was not consistent with its Christian beliefs and defended its decision to rescind her job offer based on the First Amendment. “Should the Ninth Circuit accept [World Vision’s] First Amendment defense — that religious organizations can discriminate on any basis so long as it is grounded in their religious belief — it would gut employment protections for LGBTQ individuals and pave the way for religious organizations to discriminate on the basis of not only sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity but also other protected characteristics like race, color, and national origin,” according to the national ACLU, which filed the original lawsuit on behalf Aubry McMahon.
Cedar Park Assembly v. Kriedler
The ACLU-WA filed an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals arguing to uphold the Washington State Reproductive Parity Act’s requirement that employer-sponsored health plans include access to abortion services. Our amicus brief argues that the Reproductive Parity Act (RPA) does not violate the First Amendment rights of the Cedar Park Assembly Church as a religious organization and employer. The RPA, passed in 2018, requires that insurance carriers providing health plans that cover maternity care services also provide coverage for equivalent abortion care services. The law also requires that health plans provide contraceptive coverage. Our brief describes Washington’s clear, long, and committed history of supporting and expanding access to reproductive health care, including abortion care, because it is essential primary care. We explain the importance of the RPA’s inclusion of access to abortion services, particularly for people with low incomes, people of color, immigrants, and young people who face significant barriers to access of resources, information, and services related to reproductive health and abortion care.
United States of America v. City of Seattle
We continue to monitor a Consent Decree which holds the Seattle Police Department accountable for constitutional policing practices.
In 2010, the ACLU-WA, along with 35 community organizations, called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the Seattle Police Department (SPD) regarding egregious incidents of excessive force against community members of color. As a result of that investigation, a lawsuit began, which resulted in a Consent Decree, put in place to ensure that SPD engaged in constitutional policing. In April 2023, the United States and the City of Seattle asked the Court to terminate the Consent Decree, which would end the Court’s oversight of discriminatory policing, and adopt a Transition Agreement, which would focus on two remaining issues – the use of force within the context of crowd control and officer accountability.
Since the ACLU-WA was one of the organizations that originally requested the investigation, we filed an amicus brief refuting the claim that SPD is a “transformed organization,” citing clear racial disparities that still plague the Department. Our amicus brief focuses on how officers conduct stops and details the rampant abuse and misuse of tear gas against people engaging in protected First Amendment activities, which is the basis for our lawsuit Black Lives Matter Seattle- King County v. City of Seattle. We also stressed the pressing need for the city to implement the 2017 Accountability Ordinance, which created an integrated structure of community input and civilian oversight. Finally, our brief explicitly highlighted that many of the significant issues that led to the Consent Decree are still present.
After filing our amicus brief, we received some press coverage, including in The Seattle Times. In response to our amicus brief, the City of Seattle responded, agreeing that our brief provides guidance and highlights the areas in which continued reform is still needed. Specifically, the City of Seattle agreed that “work remains in the areas of mitigating racial disparities in policing and through civil society. The City also must continue to invest in its police accountability system and ensure its sustainability.”
Ultimately, the court dissolved many portions of the Consent Decree, preserving those that govern use of force, racially biased policing, and crowd control. Although the court declared SPD a changed institution, within days of its declaration, SPD killed an international student and mocked her death, and it became public that SPD had a mock tombstone for Damarius Butts — a young Black man killed by SPD.
Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County v. City of Seattle
We continue our contempt action against the Seattle Police Department (SPD) in the use of less-lethal weapons against protesters.
SPD responded to protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by indiscriminately unleashing less-lethal weapons against peaceful protesters. We sued the City of Seattle to stop them and obtained a temporary restraining order prohibiting SPD from indiscriminately using tear gas, pepper spray, flash-bang grenades, foam-tipped projectiles, or other less-lethal weapons against protesters. The city agreed to extend the TRO as a preliminary injunction.
When SPD used these weapons again in violation of the preliminary injunction, we filed a contempt motion, which we settled when the city agreed to language clarifying that there is no “riot” exception to the preliminary injunction. The case was stayed pending adjudication of the legality of the Seattle City Council's ordinance banning less-lethal weapons under the settlement of a separate case brought by the U.S Justice Department, which led to a consent decree against the SPD. The Order issued on Sept. 7, 2023, in the consent decree case made clear that the City is not in substantial compliance with regard to the issue of use of force, including crowd management (and accountability). Further, the Order does not appear to address Seattle City Council’s passing of an ordinance banning tear gas. This case is still stayed, as a result.
State of Washington v. Mercedes
The ACLU-WA, along with the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, recently co-drafted an amicus brief in the case of State v. Mercedes. In it, we discussed the deadly implications of racialized policing across our nation and in Washington state specifically. We further argued that given the deleterious history of white supremacy in the American police force, our state’s highest court should offer robust protections against expansive police searches. We specifically pushed for greater restraints placed on ‘knock-and-talk’ searches, requiring law enforcement officers to offer Ferrier warnings to citizens before searching their property.
Protecting transgender individuals from discrimination and harassment
ACLU-WA has received numerous complaints from incarcerated individuals in the custody of Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) regarding gender identity discrimination, targeting, and harassment of transgender women by DOC staff, including DOC leadership at the facility. These complaints include allegations that transgender women are expressly targeted by DOC staff and subject to disparate treatment on the basis of their gender identity. We sent advocacy letters addressing these allegations and reminding the DOC of WCCW’s legal obligations to provide equitable treatment of transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people under the United States and Washington State constitutions and the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), as well as reminding them of their obligations to provide religious accommodations pursuant to the RLUIPA.
Personal Restraint Petition of Amber Kim
A Personal Restraint Petition (PRP) is a state-based petition available to incarcerated individuals to challenge the conditions of their confinement. We allege that the conditions of Amber Kim’s confinement violate Washington’s constitutional prohibition on cruel punishment. For over three years, Amber served her sentence at a women’s prison, where she attended college — earning a 3.98 GPA — and worked as a cook and a tutor. In March, Amber received an infraction after she was caught having consensual sexual contact with her cisgender roommate. This was Amber’s first major infraction at the women’s prison. Initially, the Department of Corrections (DOC) recommended Amber remain at the women’s prison. However, five weeks later — after no further infractions, no new information, and no change of circumstances — DOC reversed course and decided Amber should be transferred to a men’s prison. Meanwhile, Amber’s roommate suffered minimal consequences — she was transferred to a more restrictive custody status for two months and then returned to her same placement as prior to the infraction. Since July, Amber has been in solitary confinement at a men’s prison. She elects to live in solitary confinement rather than face the dire risk of violence and harassment in the general population. In the petition, we argue that Amber’s placement at a men’s prison is cruel because of the significant risk that she will experience physical violence, sexual assault, and verbal harassment. We have seen thorough, thoughtful articles since the case was filed, including coverage by The Stranger and The Seattle Times.
Pritchard v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois
We worked with the national ACLU on an amicus brief submitted to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in C.P., by and through his parents, Patricia Pritchard and Nolle Pritchard, v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois. This case analyzes whether insurance companies must provide gender affirming surgeries and treatment for minor children under the Affordable Care Act. In the amicus brief, we argued that the Affordable Care Act’s antidiscrimination provision must be interpreted in line with Title VII and Title IX case law, which hold that excluding insurance coverage for medically necessary gender affirming care is discrimination on the basis of sex. We argued that the Ninth Circuit should hold, consistent with its own legal precedent, that excluding medically necessary care that is performed for purposes of gender reassignment or to treat gender dysphoria in young people discriminates on the basis of sex.
Jewels Helping Hands v. Hansen
In April, the Washington Supreme Court overturned Spokane’s Proposition 1 anti-camping initiative on the grounds that it exceeded the proper scope of local initiative power by addressing administrative rather than legislative matters.
Spokane voters approved Prop 1 in November 2023, which functionally banned homeless encampments from most of the city. Jewels Helping Hands, a local nonprofit, and Spokane Low Income Housing Consortium sued the Spokane attorney who filed the initiative. The ACLU-WA filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs, arguing that homelessness is an involuntary condition driven by structural housing failures, and that criminalizing people for being unhoused — especially in the absence of shelter — inflicts serious harm and violates constitutional protections. Our brief further emphasized that Spokane’s law effectively banished unhoused people, echoing the legacy of vagrancy laws used to marginalize poor and historically oppressed populations.
While this ruling is specific to the procedural aspects of local ballot initiatives, it underscores the importance of ensuring that all governmental actions — whether by elected officials or through direct democracy — adhere to all legal requirements.
This decision does not directly impact the legality of other anti-camping ordinances across Washington state. It simply affirms that voter initiatives cannot be used to implement administrative policies; such matters must be addressed through appropriate legislative processes.
The ACLU of Washington continues to challenge Spokane's anti-camping and sit-and-lie ordinances in a separate lawsuit, Currie et al. v. City of Spokane, asserting that these laws violate the Washington State Constitution’s due process protections and prohibition on cruel punishment. The suit was brought on behalf of currently and formerly unhoused Spokane residents and Jewels Helping Hands. The case is still active despite the City’s motion to dismiss – which we successfully defeated in November.
The ACLU-WA’s position remains that criminalizing individuals for engaging in life-sustaining activities, such as sleeping or resting in public spaces when no adequate shelter is available, constitutes cruel punishment and is therefore unconstitutional.
“The ACLU of Washington is committed to advocating for the rights and dignity of all individuals, including those experiencing homelessness,” said La Rond Baker, Legal Director for the ACLU of Washington. “We urge local governments to focus on compassionate and effective solutions, such as increasing access to affordable housing and supportive services, rather than resorting to punitive measures that exacerbate the challenges faced by our unhoused neighbors.”
Kitcheon v. City of Seattle
The ACLU-WA has continued to litigate our case against Seattle for “encampment abatement program” policies and practices that we assert violate the privacy protections of the Washington State Constitution and other legal requirements. We defeated the City’s motion for summary judgment and the court partially granted ACLU-WA’s motion for summary judgment, holding that the city’s “obstruction sweeps” violate unhoused individual’s privacy rights under the state constitution. The court also found that the City's sweeps policy constituted cruel punishment under Article 1, section 14 of Washington’s Constitution in some circumstances because the sweeps subject the unhoused to criminal and civil penalties for living on public land when they have no alternative. The City obtained an emergency stay of the order. Division 1 of the state’s Court of Appeals affirmed most of trial court’s order and found that Article I, section 7 barred the City from performing no-notice sweeps unless there was an actual impediment to the use of public property or an emergency. The City petitioned the Supreme Court for review. We are waiting to hear whether the Supreme Court grants review.
