Parents, teachers, students go to court to get Tim Eyman’s I‑1053 overturned

A coali­tion rep­re­sent­ing par­ents, teach­ers, stu­dents, and law­mak­ers announced this morn­ing that it has filed a law­suit in King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court ask­ing that Tim Eyman and BP’s Ini­tia­tive 1053 be ful­ly strick­en from the Revised Code of Wash­ing­ton because it is bla­tant­ly unconstitutional.

Plain­tiffs include the League of Edu­ca­tion Vot­ers, Wash­ing­ton Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Sam Hunt, Reuven Car­lyle, Cindy Ryu, David Frockt, Deb Eddy, Chris Reyk­dal, Mike Sells, Jamie Ped­er­sen, and for­mer Chief Jus­tice Robert Utter.

The suit con­tends, as we have for years, that I‑1053 vio­lates Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 22 of the State Con­sti­tu­tion, which holds that the stan­dard for pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion shall be a major­i­ty vote, in keep­ing with the inten­tions of Amer­i­ca’s founders. It asks that I‑1053 be abol­ished in its entire­ty, and our state’s Con­sti­tu­tion upheld.

“Washington’s con­sti­tu­tion makes it clear the state’s para­mount duty is to ‘make ample pro­vi­sion’ for the edu­ca­tion of every child,” said Chris Korsmo, chief exec­u­tive of the League of Edu­ca­tion Vot­ers in a release announc­ing the action.

“This statute, and sim­i­lar mea­sures enact­ed in recent years, ham­strings our state’s abil­i­ty to invest in the qual­i­ty pub­lic schools our chil­dren need to suc­ceed in life.”

“Our state Con­sti­tu­tion is the ulti­mate expres­sion of the will of the peo­ple. Mak­ing sure our laws – whether passed by the leg­is­la­ture or by cit­i­zens through the ini­tia­tive process – abide by the con­sti­tu­tion is crit­i­cal to pro­tect­ing democ­ra­cy and the rule of law,” added state Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jamie Ped­er­sen, chair of the House Judi­cia­ry committee.

We at NPI hope the suit will be suc­cess­ful, but if his­to­ry is any indi­ca­tion, our courts will try to shirk their respon­si­bil­i­ty to defend our Con­sti­tu­tion and wash their hands of this mat­ter, as they have in the past.

The Supreme Court of Wash­ing­ton has dis­missed — on tech­ni­cal­i­ties — a grand total of three pri­or law­suits that jus­ti­fi­ably sought to inval­i­date I‑1053’s pre­de­ces­sors, I‑960 and I‑601. (These cas­es were, in chrono­log­i­cal order, Walk­er v. Munro, Future­wise v. Reed, and Brown v. Owen. They were decid­ed in 1994, 2007, and 2009, respectively).

The Court has nev­er decid­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tion that is at the heart of this law­suit. Maybe it will do this time. But we won’t be too sur­prised if it does­n’t. We’ve watched the court dodge hav­ing to deal with this mat­ter before. That’s the unfor­tu­nate prece­dent they’ve set.

This suit rep­re­sents the fourth attempt to get the Court to do its job — uphold­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion. Inter­est­ing­ly, the attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the plain­tiffs in this case — Paul Lawrence — also argued Walk­er sev­en­teen years ago.

From what I can tell, Lawrence has attempt­ed to draft a com­plaint that antic­i­pates the kinds of objec­tions the courts have raised before. The por­tion of the com­plaint that address­es stand­ing notes, “Plain­tiffs have stand­ing to bring this action on mul­ti­ple alter­na­tive grounds.”

In part, this is because a num­ber of the indi­vid­u­als bring­ing the com­plaint are harmed in mul­ti­ple ways. For instance, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Chris Reyk­dal is a school board mem­ber in addi­tion to being a state representative.