Kittitas County Superior Court judge turns back constitutional challenge to I‑1433

A Supe­ri­or Court judge in Kit­ti­tas Coun­ty has turned back a con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge to I‑1433 filed by sev­er­al trade asso­ci­a­tions, leav­ing new require­ments for paid leave and increas­es to the state’s min­i­mum wage in place.

“[T]his Court is of the opin­ion that the Plain­tiffs have failed to estab­lish that I‑1433 has vio­lat­ed the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion in any man­ner. Accord­ing­ly, sum­ma­ry judg­ment will be entered for the State by sep­a­rate order, filed this state,” wrote Judge Scott R. Sparks in a let­ter to coun­sel accom­pa­ny­ing his ruling.

Sparks was asked to find I‑1433 uncon­sti­tu­tion­al on mul­ti­ple grounds by three cou­ples and the fol­low­ing alliance of trade associations.

• The (ardent­ly right wing) Nation­al Fed­er­a­tion of Inde­pen­dent Business
• The Wash­ing­ton Farm Bureau
• The Wash­ing­ton Retail Association
• The North­west Food Proces­sors Association
• The Wash­ing­ton Food Indus­try Association

Plain­tiffs were rep­re­sent­ed by Phil Tal­madge, a for­mer Supreme Court jus­tice who has since returned to pri­vate prac­tice and helped decide the land­mark ATU case.

(ATU, or Amal­ga­mat­ed Tran­sit Union v. State, was the deci­sion that result­ed in Tim Eyman’s I‑695 being struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al due to hav­ing vio­lat­ed the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion’s sin­gle sub­ject rule.)

The State of Wash­ing­ton, which defends vot­er-approved ini­tia­tives, was rep­re­sent­ed by Cal­lie Castil­lo and Rebec­ca Glas­gow of Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son’s office.

After hear­ing oral argu­ments on April 21st and con­sid­er­ing the briefs sub­mit­ted by coun­sel, Sparks grant­ed sum­ma­ry judg­ment to the State of Wash­ing­ton, uphold­ing I‑1433 as con­sti­tu­tion­al. The coali­tion that spon­sored I‑1433, Raise Up Wash­ing­ton (which includes NPI — we proud­ly gath­ered sig­na­tures for the ini­tia­tive), inter­vened in the case and was rep­re­sent­ed by Lynn Allen Award recip­i­ent Paul J. Lawrence of Paci­fi­ca Law Group with Gre­go­ry J. Wong and Alan­na E. Peterson.

Tal­madge argued that I‑1433 could­n’t be con­sti­tu­tion­al because its min­i­mum wage and paid leave pro­vi­sions lacked ratio­nal unity.

“I‑1433’s title is restric­tive in scope,” argued Tal­madge in his ini­tial com­plaint. “It address­es two dis­tinct issues — the min­i­mum wage and ‘sick leave’. As the bal­lot title is restric­tive, 1–1433 fails arti­cle II ‚§ 9’s one-sub­ject man­date as it carves out two dis­tinct sub­ject mat­ters — increas­ing the min­i­mum wage and address­ing ‘sick leave’.”

Judge Sparks disagreed.

“I‑1433 deals with a gen­er­al sub­ject, labor stan­dards. The bal­lot title specif­i­cal­ly gave the pub­lic notice that the law dealt with the min­i­mum wage, paid sick leave, and relat­ed laws. Inquir­ing minds were put on notice that the min­i­mum wage and paid sick leave were on the bal­lot. The Plain­tiffs have failed to estab­lish that the sub­ject in title test of Arti­cle II, § 19 was vio­lat­ed beyond a rea­son­able doubt.”

Tal­madge also argued that I‑1433 was invalid because it amend­ed pre­vi­ous­ly enact­ed statutes per­tain­ing to employ­ee leave with­out ref­er­enc­ing them as the Con­sti­tu­tion requires. Sparks reject­ed this argu­ment too.

“Plain­tiffs argue that 1–1433 mod­i­fied the var­i­ous employ­ee leave laws by impli­ca­tion yet nev­er set forth those exist­ing laws at full length,” not­ed the judge.

“How­ev­er, rather than express­ly mod­i­fy­ing var­i­ous employ­ee leave laws, I‑1433 set forth a new cat­e­go­ry of employ­ee leave that hereto­fore had not exist­ed in this State: manda­to­ry paid ‘sick’ leave. While it is true that the def­i­n­i­tion of ‘sick leave’ includ­ed oth­er types of employ­ee leave that pre­vi­ous to I‑1433 were not known as sick leave, those exist­ing leave laws did not require said leave to be compensated.”

“Accord­ing­ly, I­-1433 was com­plete, inde­pen­dent, and stood alone on the par­tic­u­lar sub­ject of paid sick leave. The Plain­tiffs have not estab­lished beyond a rea­son­able doubt that I‑1433 vio­lat­ed Arti­cle II, § 37 of the Wash­ing­ton Constitution.”

Sparks’ rul­ing rep­re­sents a com­plete defeat for Tal­madge and his clients. They had filed their case in Kit­ti­tas Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court in the hopes of secur­ing a favor­able opin­ion at the tri­al court lev­el (a prac­tice col­lo­qui­al­ly known as forum shop­ping) so as to be in a stronger posi­tion when the case reached the Supreme Court on appeal. But they did­n’t win. So if there’s going to be an appeal, they’ll have to file it.

The busi­ness groups fund­ing this law­suit would be bet­ter served by sim­ply pulling the plug on this chal­lenge and urg­ing their employ­er-mem­bers to sim­ply pay their work­ers as the law requires. Appeal­ing to the state Supreme Court real­ly does­n’t make sense, espe­cial­ly when the Court ruled two years ago in Filo Foods that SeaT­ac’s sim­i­lar min­i­mum wage and paid leave ini­tia­tive was constitutional.

Appro­pri­ate­ly, Sparks cit­ed and quot­ed from the Filo Foods rul­ing in his let­ter to coun­sel explain­ing his deci­sion to grant the state sum­ma­ry judgment.

We’ve seen some grum­bling on social media com­ing from the oth­er side in response to this deci­sion, which is to be expect­ed. Right wing com­men­ta­tors have asked how I‑1433 can be con­sti­tu­tion­al when Tim Eyman’s I‑695 was­n’t, for example.

The answer to that par­tic­u­lar ques­tion is that I‑1433’s pro­vi­sions are defen­si­bly relat­ed, where­as I‑695’s pro­vi­sions lacked ratio­nal uni­ty.

Eyman’s I‑695 tried to do two very dif­fer­ent things: repeal the statewide motor vehi­cle excise tax, or MVET, and require a pub­lic vote for any future rev­enue increase. Eyman stuffed the sec­ond pro­vi­sion in because he want­ed two ini­tia­tives for the price of one. He was logrolling. Accord­ing­ly, I‑695 was found unconstitutional.

I‑1433 does not suf­fer from I‑695’s defect. The mea­sure has a sin­gle sub­ject, labor stan­dards, and a sin­gle pur­pose: bol­ster pay for Wash­ing­ton’s fam­i­lies. This sin­gle pur­pose is accom­plished with two strate­gies, but those strate­gies are relat­ed. Increas­ing the min­i­mum wage and requir­ing employ­ers to pro­vide paid leave for work­ers both result in bet­ter-com­pen­sat­ed work­ers and bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions. The ini­tia­tive there­fore com­plies with Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 19 (the sin­gle sub­ject rule).

Curi­ous­ly, as Judge Sparks observed, Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 19 itself con­tains two pro­vi­sions. It requires, first­ly, that a statute embrace only one sub­ject, and sec­ond­ly, that the statute’s sub­ject shall be expressed in its title. How­ev­er, as the Con­sti­tu­tion is the supreme law of the land, that incon­sis­ten­cy is just an amusement.

I‑1433’s spon­sors took care to ensure that the mea­sure they would even­tu­al­ly pour sub­stan­tial resources into was well-draft­ed before final­iz­ing it, because they want­ed it to stand as thought­ful­ly writ­ten law. And that leg­work paid off.

Unlike Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tives, there is no mal­ice under­pin­ning I‑1433. The ini­tia­tive does­n’t try to sub­vert our Con­sti­tu­tion or wreck gov­ern­ment. It sim­ply requires a min­i­mum thresh­old of com­pen­sa­tion for Wash­ing­ton’s workers.

Tim Eyman could have decid­ed after the ATU case to respect the Con­sti­tu­tion when com­ing up with future schemes. But he chose not to. Eyman great­ly resents the lim­i­ta­tions that the Con­sti­tu­tion places on the ini­tia­tive pow­er, and has rel­ished putting ini­tia­tives in front of the peo­ple that attempt to defy those lim­i­ta­tions. He has set the stage for his own court loss­es many, many times.

For Eyman, ini­tia­tives are not so much a means to an end as a way of life. Eyman must always have an ini­tia­tive to sell, even when he does­n’t have the mon­ey to get on the bal­lot. Con­se­quent­ly, Eyman is solic­it­ing con­tri­bu­tions from his fol­low­ers right now for an ini­tia­tive he knows isn’t going any­where (I‑1550).

For us, ini­tia­tives are a tool for bypass­ing a grid­locked Leg­is­la­ture and rais­ing up every­one. That’s why we hap­pi­ly sup­port­ed the devel­op­ment and qual­i­fi­ca­tion of I‑1433. This ini­tia­tive isn’t just good for Wash­ing­ton’s work­ers — it’s good for Wash­ing­ton’s busi­ness­es, too. When states take steps to make their economies more inclu­sive, that results in a bet­ter busi­ness cli­mate and broad­er prosperity.

As the late Sen­a­tor Paul Well­stone said, we all do bet­ter when we all do bet­ter.