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In 2024, ACLU-WA's Legal Director La Rond Baker developed an expanded legal team of new and veteran attorneys dedicated to fighting for freedom, equity and justice. This powerful team's efforts advanced litigation and court-based advocacy in every priority area, shaping the legal landscape through lawsuits and its robust amicus practice before the Courts of Appeals and the Washington state Supreme Court.
Below is a sampling of our legal department's recent and ongoing court-based advocacy.
Safeguarding Voting Rights
The ACLU-WA worked with Empowering Latina Leaders & Action (ELLA) to transform the election system for the Sunnyside School District, which violated the Washington Voting Rights Act (WVRA). The adoption of a district-based electoral system addressed the stark lack of representation caused by at-large voting, which diluted Latinx votes and prevented the community from having an equal opportunity to meaningfully influence the outcome of elections. Despite the District’s 81% Latinx population, no Latinx candidate had ever defeated a white candidate in a school board race. After the ACLU-WA notified the school district of its WVRA violation earlier this year, the District agreed to settle the claim and change its voting system. In the settlement, the Sunnyside School District agreed to move to a by-district voting system. The parties agreed to redraw voting maps to include three active majority Latinx voting districts. The new voting maps and by-district system must be implemented for the 2025 primary and general elections, when all five school board seats will be on the ballot. “By-district elections give people a better say in their lives, instead of allowing a small group to dictate the decisions for an entire community,” said David Montes, staff attorney for the ACLU-WA. “We’re excited for Latinx residents in Sunnyside to have an election system that will better represent their interests, and thankful to the Sunnyside School District for working with us in good faith to alleviate the community’s concerns. We hope other jurisdictions take note and change their system without the need for costly legal action”
Filed Suit to Stop Initiative 2081
We won a key ruling in King County Superior Court to temporarily stop Initiative 2081 from going into effect. Along with our partners at Legal Voice and QLaw Foundation, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of ten plaintiffs in May to prevent implementation of the initiative, which was passed by the Legislature in March and contains vague, misleading language that changes important laws designed to protect youth privacy. Its implementation would harm LGBTQIA2S+ students, homeless students, youth of color, and students from other marginalized backgrounds. The lawsuit continues but we are heartened that some of its most harmful provisions are blocked for now.
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 Seattle City Attorney’s Office directing all assistant city attorneys to file an “affidavit of prejudice” against Judge Pooja Vaddadi on all criminal cases. Judge Vaddadi was elected to serve in Seattle Municipal Court, which is foremost a misdemeanor criminal court. The Seattle City Attorney’s Office has the exclusive authority to prosecute misdemeanor cases in Seattle Municipal Court. Under its mandatory policy, the City Attorney’s office went from filing only a few disqualifications per month to filing on average several hundred – a rate that overwhelmingly exceeds the City’s prior use of judicial disqualifications.
Due to the City Attorney’s mandate, Judge Vadaddi’s role on the bench has been limited to addressing traffic and parking citations, a function typically performed by magistrate judicial officers, not elected judges. This has effectively removed Judge Vaddadi from the position she was elected to by the voting public.
The suit was brought on behalf of the Washington Community Alliance (WCA), as well as three individual Seattle voters. “The people of Seattle elected Judge Vaddadi, and another elected official is undermining the democratic will of Seattle voters by preventing Judge Vaddadi from doing her job,” said La Rond Baker, legal director for ACLU-WA.
Al-Tharwa v. Yakima County
On September 30, we filed a class action lawsuit against Yakima County over their 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 and the Court needed to deliver the petitioners from those 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 find that continuing to charge people with cases that should have been dismissed is also an unlawful restraint.
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.
ACLU-WA v. King County
We filed a lawsuit to enforce the Hammer v. King County settlement agreement relating to issues around conditions being experienced by inmates at the King County Correctional Facility (KCCF). The settlement agreement requires the jail to maintain certain conditions subject to court enforcement. Recent severe staffing shortages have resulted in people not being transported to medically necessary appointments, not receiving the appropriate time out of cell, and not being transported to court. KCCF has recorded the highest number of deaths in recent memory. The ACLU-WA filed a lawsuit in Pierce County to protect people incarcerated in the facility by enforcing the settlement agreement. In response to our lawsuit, KCCF has done significant work — including removing all ligature risks throughout the facility — and has remedied most of the significant underlying concerns. The case settled and the Legal Department continues to monitor conditions at KCCF.
United States of America v. City of Seattle
We continue to monitor a Consent Decree to hold 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.
Kitcheon v. City of Seattle
Many municipalities across the state choose to criminalize homelessness by creating, passing, and enforcing bans on camping or sitting and lying down in public spaces. These bans on being unhoused in public, especially when shelters are at capacity and housing is limited or nonexistent, constitute cruel punishment. They criminalize actions that individuals who cannot afford brick-and-mortar housing, and who have no choice or alternatives, must take to protect themselves from the elements, safeguard their privacy, and keep their personal belongings secure. Furthermore, municipalities often enforce their camping bans by conducting sweeps, where government personnel and police open the doors of tents and temporary shelters, search through personal possessions, remove belongings, and discard entire homes and property into garbage trucks — all without a warrant.
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 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. Although this matter is currently before Division I of the Court of Appeals, we filed a Motion to Transfer to the Supreme Court and are awaiting a final determination.
Currie et al. v. Spokane
ACLU-WA filed Currie et al. v. Spokane, a case which challenges laws that punish sleeping and camping outside.
The lawsuit targets three Spokane municipal codes that, in effect, criminalize homelessness. The first ordinance makes camping and sleeping on public property a misdemeanor. The second makes sitting or lying between 6:00 a.m. and 12:00 a.m. on public property that is encompassed by a designated zone (such as a public sidewalk) a misdemeanor. The third authorizes the city to remove, destroy, or sometimes store the property of individuals who have been cited for unlawful camping. The lawsuit alleges that these ordinances functionally criminalize homelessness and impose cruel punishment in violation of Article 1, Section 14 of the Washington State Constitution. The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare them unconstitutional. The suit was brought on behalf of currently and formerly unhoused Spokane residents and Jewels Helping Hands, a nonprofit organization providing direct outreach in the greater Spokane area.
Our case gives our state courts the opportunity to better protect people in Washington and to confirm that the criminalization of unhoused people is cruel. "We cannot arrest our way out of homelessness and poverty,” said La Rond Baker, ACLU-WA's legal director. “If our state’s constitutional prohibition on cruel punishment means anything, it means that our poorest neighbors — those who lack a home, those who live and sleep outdoors — cannot be punished for being unhoused.”
The case is still active despite the City’s motion to dismiss – which we successfully defeated in November.
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.”
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.
Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) v. Uttecht
Last year, we filed an amicus brief in HRDC v. Uttecht, a case over a Department of Corrections (DOC) prohibition on incarcerated people possessing materials describing “case law.” Under this policy, from 2018-2020, the Coyote Ridge Corrections Center rejected all incoming mail to prisoners containing information about case law from any state or federal court and rejected legal articles mentioning cases, including The Habeas Citebook, a publication which is intended to assist incarcerated people who are serving as their own attorneys. Our brief discussed the violation of the First Amendment rights of people who are incarcerated and highlighted how access to justice and resources is crucial not only to those who are incarcerated but anyone who may want to provide those resources directly, such as the HRDC, law firms, legal search engines, and individuals. As Black and brown people experience over-policing and therefore are incarcerated at disproportionately higher rates than white people, DOC’s policies disproportionately affect marginalized communities.
In November 2023, the Ninth Circuit ruled that, although DOC has since repealed this unconstitutional policy, the rejection of publications like The Habeas Citebook resulted in both past and future injury, for which DOC may be liable for damages. The Court sent the case back to the district court to address the claims that DOC’s policy violates the First Amendment as well as to determine whether two DOC employees can be held individually liable for violating the Constitution. The district court ruled against HRDC. HRDC appealed and we filed another amicus brief, in the Ninth Circuit, in support of HRDC.
Olympus Spa v. Armstrong
On June 4, 2024, we filed an amicus brief with partners from the national ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of the State’s arguments in Olympus Spa v. Armstrong. Olympus Spa, a traditional Korean spa whose owners have theologically conservative Christian values, has a “female-only” policy and denied entrance to a transgender woman. After engaging in the complaints process with the Human Rights Commission and agreeing to change its policies, Olympus Spa sued the State in the Western District of Washington, arguing that the Human Rights Commission’s enforcement of the Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD) violates Olympus Spa’s First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of association. The Western District dismissed Olympus Spa’s complaint, and the Spa appealed. Our brief argues that enforcement of the WLAD does not violate Olympus Spa’s free exercise rights, as it is a neutral, generally applicable law that is related to the legitimate government purpose of protecting all Washingtonians from discrimination in places of public accommodation. We cautioned the Court about adopting Olympus Spa’s arguments, as they would allow for widespread discrimination and were unsupported by the WLAD’s history. Additionally, modern courts have consistently considered, and rejected, the argument that religious beliefs should override discrimination protections.
Vet Voice v. Hobbs
In September, we filed an amicus brief in Vet Voice v. Hobbs, a case challenging the Washington law that requires signature matching of ballots because the practice rejects tens of thousands of ballots while detecting no fraud. Even more troubling, the ballot rejections are extremely racially disproportionate. “Because of the subjective nature of the signature comparison process, the implicit biases we all carry, and the politicization of voting, it is easy to see how racial bias could play a role in creating a racially disparate impact on the fundamental right to vote,” according to the ACLU-WA’s brief.
Jewels Helping Hands v. Hansen
We filed an amicus brief in Jewels Helping Hands (JHH) v. Hansen. JHH challenged a Spokane initiative that expanded the areas in which it is illegal to camp or do basic life-sustaining activities outside, including prohibiting camping within 1,000 feet of a school, park, daycare, or other facilities. Our brief seeks to strengthen the Washington Supreme Court’s understanding of the homelessness crisis facing our state and the harms associated with criminalization. This brief demonstrates that homelessness is the result of structural forces, such as the lack of affordable housing, and that while homelessness is dangerous to the health of the people experiencing it, the criminalization of homelessness further exacerbates their health risks.
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.
Puki v. Okanogan County
We joined our partners Public Accountability and the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability to file an amicus brief in Puki v. Okanogan County before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Lori Langton suffered a medical episode that left her unresponsive at a hospital. After a crisis responder misdiagnosed her, she was taken to jail, where guards put her on the concrete floor of a cell. Only after she laid on the floor for over 20 hours without moving did the jail officials call for medical attention, and Ms. Langton died from a blood clot that developed as a result of the officials' negligence. Her estate sued, and the trial court denied her claims on qualified immunity, ruling that the jail officials could not be liable because they did not have notice that their actions — ignoring her obvious medical distress and leaving her on a concrete jail cell floor for over 20 hours while she was essentially comatose — violated Ms. Langton's civil rights. Our brief outlines why the government should not be allowed to hide behind qualified immunity in this case.
