This morn­ing, the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court ren­dered a pre­lim­i­nary ver­dict in Huff v. Wyman, the scope chal­lenge to Tim Eyman’s I‑1366. The Court has ruled unan­i­mous­ly that plain­tiffs’ request for an injunc­tion should be denied, which we under­stand means that I‑1366 will appear on the Novem­ber 2015 ballot.

The Court entered the fol­low­ing order:

This mat­ter came before the en banc court on appel­lants’ direct appeal to this court and motion for accel­er­at­ed review of a King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court order deny­ing appel­lants’ motion to enjoin the Sec­re­tary of State from plac­ing Ini­tia­tive Mea­sure No. 1366 (1–1366) on the Novem­ber 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion ballot.

The court has deter­mined unan­i­mous­ly that the present order should be entered imme­di­ate­ly, with an opin­ion explain­ing the court’s rea­son­ing to be entered in due course.

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:
The appeal is retained by this Court for a deci­sion on the merits.
Appel­lants have not made the clear show­ing nec­es­sary for injunc­tive relief as required by Rabon v. City of Seat­tle, 135 Wn.2d 278, 957 P.2d 621 (1998). The supe­ri­or court order deny­ing appel­lants’ motion for injunc­tive relief is affirmed.

DATED at Olympia, Wash­ing­ton this  4th day of Sep­tem­ber, 2015.

For the Court:

Bar­bara Madsen
Chief Justice

This is a curi­ous order. On the one hand, the Court has declined to issue an injunc­tion, which is unfor­tu­nate. It’s a deci­sion that will please all of the defen­dants in the case (Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman, Tim Eyman, and Eyman’s asso­ciates). How­ev­er, the Court has decid­ed to retain the appeal “for a deci­sion on the mer­its”. So they’re not sim­ply wash­ing their hands of the challenge.

Going into this, the plain­tiffs knew (as did we), that a vic­to­ry would be hard to achieve. But a chal­lenge need­ed to be attempt­ed. I‑1366 is so destruc­tive that it need­ed to be fought in every way possible.

We are grate­ful to the won­der­ful team at Paci­fi­ca Law Group — Paul Lawrence, Kym­ber­ly Evans, Sarah Wash­burn — who craft­ed and argued a sol­id case, first at the tri­al court lev­el and then at the appel­late level.

So far, it has yield­ed a note­wor­thy deci­sion find­ing that I‑1366 is out­side the scope, which the Supreme Court has not dis­agreed with. The Court has sig­naled it has more to say, and per­haps when it does, it will affirm the King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court’s scope find­ing, which would set a help­ful precedent.

Sad­ly, with­out an injunc­tion, Sec­re­tary of State Wyman is going to leave I‑1366 on the bal­lot, which means a lot of time and mon­ey is going to wast­ed hold­ing an elec­tion on an ini­tia­tive that is not only beyond the scope of the peo­ple’s ini­tia­tive pow­er, but bla­tant­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in mul­ti­ple respects.

If I‑1366 is beyond the scope, then it stands to rea­son it will not hold up in a post-elec­tion chal­lenge, which means it won’t ever become law.

How­ev­er, we sim­ply can­not afford to let Tim Eyman go unchal­lenged in the court of pub­lic opin­ion. We at NPI have believed, ever since Eyman revealed he had mon­ey for I‑1366, that the ini­tia­tive need­ed and deserved to be met by a strong, vig­or­ous oppo­si­tion cam­paign. We began our coali­tion-build­ing work against this ini­tia­tive last Feb­ru­ary, and have con­tin­ued it even dur­ing the court case, antic­i­pat­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that I‑1366 would stay on the ballot.

We are pleased that more and more orga­ni­za­tions con­tin­ue to join the coali­tion, from the Main­stream Repub­li­cans to AARP Wash­ing­ton State to OneAm­er­i­ca Votes. In the weeks to come, we antic­i­pate the coali­tion’s ros­ter will grow even larg­er, and we will sig­nif­i­cant­ly ramp up our efforts to edu­cate the pub­lic about the dev­as­ta­tion that I‑1366 would cause. The use of coer­cion to sab­o­tage our Con­sti­tu­tion runs counter to the val­ues our state was found­ed on. I‑1366 should be defeat­ed by vot­ers, there­by avert­ing the need for fur­ther litigation.

We believe our kids should not be hostages to bad pol­i­tics. We urge all Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to join us in emphat­i­cal­ly vot­ing NO on Tim Eyman’s I‑1366.