Schedule set for Supreme Court appeal of Judge Downing’s decision in Lee v. State

The Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court has set­tled on a sched­ule for hear­ing the appeal of King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge William Down­ing’s deci­sion in Lee v. State, the legal chal­lenge to Tim Eyman’s I‑1366, accord­ing to an order signed by Chief Jus­tice Bar­bara Mad­sen ear­li­er today. Wrote Madsen:

On Jan­u­ary 25, 2016, Appel­lant, the State of Wash­ing­ton, filed ‘Accel­er­at­ed Motion for Expe­dit­ed Review’ in the above ref­er­enced case. Respon­dents filed an answer on Jan­u­ary 26, 2016, and the State’s reply to the answer was filed on Jan­u­ary 27, 2016. The Court hav­ing con­sid­ered the motion, answer and reply, and hav­ing deter­mined by major­i­ty that the fol­low­ing order be entered:

Now, there­fore, it is here­by ORDERED: That the Appel­lan­t’s accel­er­at­ed motion for expe­dit­ed review is grant­ed. The sched­ule for per­fec­tion of the record and brief­ing shall be as follows:

• Des­ig­na­tion of Clerk’s Papers: Jan­u­ary 29, 2016
• Supe­ri­or Court to pro­vide index and File Clerk’s Papers at the Supreme Court: Feb­ru­ary 5, 2016
• Appel­lan­t’s Open­ing Brief: Feb­ru­ary 5, 2016
• Respon­den­t’s Response Brief: Feb­ru­ary 19, 2016
• Appel­lan­t’s Reply Brief: Feb­ru­ary 26, 2016
• Ami­cus Briefs, if any: March 2, 2016
• Answer to Ami­cus Briefs, if any: March 10, 2016

Oral argu­ment will be heard on March 15, 2016, at 1:30 PM, as the 4th case in the afternoon.

DATED at Olympia, Wash­ing­ton this 29th day of Jan­u­ary, 2016.

For the Court

Bar­bara Madsen
Chief Justice

Argu­ment will be heard at the Tem­ple of Jus­tice in Olympia, which is where the State Supreme Court meets and works.

Appel­lants, rep­re­sent­ed by Deputy Solic­i­tor Gen­er­als Cal­lie Castil­lo and Rebec­ca Glas­gow and attor­ney Richard Stephens, had pushed the Court for an even tighter sched­ule, propos­ing that oral argu­ment be heard on March 10th (the last sched­uled day of the 2016 leg­isla­tive ses­sion) and that the Court rule the same day.

Respon­dents, rep­re­sent­ed by Paci­fi­ca Law Group, opposed this request. (The respon­dents are the plain­tiffs in the case, chal­leng­ing the valid­i­ty of I‑1366.)

“Respon­dents agree that this appeal should receive expe­dit­ed con­sid­er­a­tion but not on as rushed a sched­ule as pro­posed by the State,” wrote Paci­fi­ca’s attor­neys Paul Lawrence, Sarah Wash­burn, and Kym­ber­ly Evan­son. “This appeal rais­es issues that require full brief­ing and con­sid­ered delib­er­a­tion by the Court. And there is no ben­e­fit to set­ting argu­ment on the last day of the leg­isla­tive ses­sion or to issu­ing a one sen­tence deci­sion with opin­ion to fol­low that pro­vides lit­tle guidance.”

The Court reject­ed appel­lants’ request for oral argu­ment on March 10th and an imme­di­ate deci­sion to fol­low, but did agree to oral argu­ment on March 15th, when it was already set to hear argu­ment in three oth­er cases.

The time­line cho­sen by the Court gives it sev­er­al weeks to delib­er­ate pri­or to the date that the sales tax would have been low­ered were I‑1366 in effect. (The ini­tia­tive is cur­rent­ly unen­force­able due to Judge Down­ing’s decision.)

The Supreme Court can move quick­ly on a case when it wants to (as it demon­strat­ed in 2004 dur­ing the man­u­al recount of the 2004 guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion), but it usu­al­ly does­n’t. In League of Edu­ca­tion Vot­ers v. State, the land­mark case chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of I‑601 and its clones I‑960, I‑1053, and I‑1185, the Supreme Court did not pub­lish its deci­sion until many months after it had heard oral argument.

(I‑1366 is Tim Eyman’s response to the LEV decision.)

But per­haps the Court appre­ci­ates that a swift res­o­lu­tion to this case would be ben­e­fi­cial to the pub­lic inter­est, giv­en that I‑1366 is an attempt to black­mail the Leg­is­la­ture into doing Eyman’s bid­ding by threat­en­ing to wipe out $8 bil­lion in fund­ing for schools and vital pub­lic ser­vices over the next six years.