(The Center Square) – Anti-tax activist Tim Eyman on Thursday lost his bid at the Washington Supreme Court to force Secretary of State Steve Hobbs to process his proposed referendum on Engrossed Substitute House Bill 1296.
Passed earlier this year by majority party Democrats in the state Legislature, ESHB 1296 establishes new requirements in public education for immediate parental notification of serious incidents, provides a complaint process for noncompliance with student safety laws, and protects school employees from retaliation for supporting students' rights.
Critics, including Eyman, contend the law undermines Initiative 2081, which was passed by the Legislature in 2024. I-2081 grants specific rights to parents and legal guardians of public school students, including the right to inspect school records, review curriculum materials, and receive notification of certain events, such as the provision of medical services or questioning of their child by law enforcement.
Hobbs refused to file Eyman’s referendum based on the fact that ESHB 1296 has an emergency clause. This allowed the bill to take effect immediately upon the governor's signature on May 20, making it referendum-proof.
“We did a little research, and we found out there are 183 bills,” Sen. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake, said when asked by The Center Square during an April media availability event about the number of bills with an emergency clause.
The Center Square spoke with Eyman on Thursday about the decision.
“It’s pretty maddening to see it. I do these lawsuits, not just because I think I'm going to eventually win, but to kind of expose how corrupt the system is,” Eyman told The Center Square. “A law says that an elected official has to do something. He doesn't do it. And the court said, ‘That’s okay with us.’ That’s pretty upsetting, pretty maddening.”
A day after Gov. Bob Ferguson signed ESHB 1296 into law, Eyman filed the referendum.
“A referendum gives the people a chance to be able to collect signatures, and to say if they agree or disagree with the fact that he just signed into law the gutting of our citizen initiative,” Eyman explained. “So, I filed it the following day. They took my money. They assigned it a referendum number, but the secretary of state refused to send it on to the attorney general to give it a ballot title. Without a ballot title, you can't print up petitions. You can't collect signatures.”
In its unanimous ruling Thursday, the high court wrote that Eyman “contends that the plain language of the elections act, and this court’s precedent, require the Secretary to accept his properly filed referendum, assign it a serial number, and transmit it to the attorney general for preparation of a ballot title and summary. We hold that the Secretary has no mandatory duty to process a purported referendum on legislation that is, on its face, constitutionally exempt from referendum… The petition for a writ of mandamus is denied.”
Eyman said the good news is that the signature-gathering effort to restore the parents’ rights measure continues.
“He's having to get twice as many signatures as it would have required with my ballot measure, but he has found a way to be able to give the voters exactly what this referendum would have done,” he said.
Eyman was referring to conservative political action group Let’s Go Washington and its founder, Brian Heywood. The group is currently gathering signatures for a voter initiative to restore I-2081.
Initiative Measure No. IL26-001 would “reinstate Initiative 2081’s laws guaranteeing parents’ rights, including reviewing their children’s instructional materials, accessing their school records, being notified when medical services are provided, and opting out of certain classes. Voter approval of this initiative provides two years of constitutional protection from legislative interference, which reinforces Initiative 2081’s laws guaranteeing parents’ rights,” according to the text of the initiative.
LGW founder Heywood texted a statement to The Center Square following the court’s Thursday decision denying Eyman’s challenge.
“40 [sic] years of one-party rule has led to arrogant lawmakers in Olympia essentially eliminating the citizens' constitutional right to referendum through abuse of the emergency clause,” he texted. “It is shameful that the WA Supreme Court seems to be rubber stamping Olympia rather than upholding a nonpartisan interpretation of the law.”
Washington State Republican Party Chair Jim Walsh, who also serves in the state House of Representatives, tells The Center Square he will offer legislation for the upcoming session to rein in the use of the emergency clause.
“Yes, I will,” he said. “Especially in light of widespread concerns about HB 1531.”
House Bill 1531, which has an emergency clause, passed during this year’s legislative session, “preserves the state's ability to address communicable diseases by ensuring public health responses are guided by science and that local jurisdictions cannot enact measures that prohibit evidence-based controls like vaccines,” according to the bill summary.
Minority Republicans pushed back on the legislation, with many citing concerns that it would allow unilateral decisions during public health emergencies, such as those made during the COVID-19 pandemic by former Gov. Jay Inslee, who issued a state of emergency that remained in effect for over two and a half years. Many critics, primarily Republicans, said it lasted too long without sufficient legislative oversight.
