Governor Jay Inslee signs comprehensive sexual health education legislation into law

Anoth­er one of NPI’s prin­ci­pal 2020 leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties has become a law.

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee today signed ESSB 5395, prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Claire Wil­son and cham­pi­oned by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mon­i­ca Stonier in the House.

The bill sen­si­bly requires that all Wash­ing­ton pub­lic schools teach age-appro­pri­ate com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion (CSHE), although it allows par­ents to opt their chil­dren out of receiv­ing CSHE instruc­tion and it keeps school dis­tricts in charge of mak­ing deci­sions about the cur­ricu­lum that is to be taught.

The bill passed the Leg­is­la­ture on a set of par­ty line votes, with Democ­rats in strong sup­port and Repub­li­cans fer­vent­ly opposed.

It was arguably the most divi­sive bill con­sid­ered dur­ing the session.

House Repub­li­cans tried to destroy the leg­is­la­tion by fil­ing hun­dreds of amend­ments against it; their gam­bit failed when House Speak­er Lau­rie Jink­ins sched­uled a marathon floor ses­sion that ran until 2 AM to ensure the bill would get a vote.

Repub­li­cans have relied heav­i­ly on mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­hon­est talk­ing points to make a case against the bill. They have false­ly argued, for exam­ple, that the bill requires kinder­gart­ners to be taught about sex­u­al inter­course (it does­n’t). They have argued that the bill pro­motes pornog­ra­phy (it does­n’t). They have even hyper­bol­i­cal­ly claimed that CSHE will rob chil­dren of their inno­cence (it won’t).

Fol­low­ing pas­sage of the bill, Repub­li­cans (the state par­ty, the House Repub­li­cans, and the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans) all called for a guber­na­to­r­i­al veto, using the social media hash­tag #Lis­ten­ToTheP­eo­ple.

But lis­ten­ing to the peo­ple is exact­ly what Inslee did by sign­ing the bill.

Late last year, NPI asked a large sam­pling of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers (nine hun­dred!) about their views on the leg­is­la­tion. We found 67% in sup­port of the bill — more than two thirds — with about half, 49%, in strong sup­port of com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion. The oppo­si­tion clocked in at just 22%.

That’s com­pelling evi­dence that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans sup­port ESSB 5395.

The only evi­dence Repub­li­cans have pro­duced to date that the peo­ple are on their side is anec­do­tal or unsci­en­tif­ic. For exam­ple, Repub­li­cans have cit­ed par­ent respons­es to OSPI sur­veys about com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health education.

But what they haven’t admit­ted is that right wing groups opposed to CSHE mobi­lized right wing par­ents to fill out those sur­veys. The sur­vey tak­ers were self-select­ed and not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the state’s vot­ing population.

Repub­li­cans have also cir­cu­lat­ed pho­tos of crowds massed on the steps of the Leg­isla­tive Build­ing in oppo­si­tion to the bill as proof as “the peo­ple” oppose it.

Well, we have pho­tos of crowds on those same steps who sup­port the bill.

For exam­ple:

And, oh, look: The peo­ple in this pho­to are pret­ty much all young peo­ple… the peo­ple who this bill pri­mar­i­ly affects!

When peo­ple hold pas­sion­ate views about an issue, it’s not hard to pack a hear­ing room or fill the Capi­tol steps with peo­ple. But as I said ear­li­er, such assem­blies don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the views of the vot­ing pub­lic as a whole.

Repub­li­cans seem utter­ly con­vinced that with this bill, they have found a wedge issue that they can use against Democ­rats this sum­mer and autumn in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. And they plan on going beyond mere­ly using it as fod­der for attack mail­ers in leg­isla­tive races. The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, head­ed by Trump apol­o­gist Caleb Heim­lich, has com­mit­ted itself to orga­niz­ing a ref­er­en­dum dri­ve, which, if suc­cess­ful, would force a statewide vote on the bill.

Iron­i­cal­ly, for pub­lic health rea­sons, Repub­li­cans can­not col­lect sig­na­tures against this pub­lic health leg­is­la­tion using the time-test­ed prac­tices of putting peti­tions out­side of church ser­vices or sta­tion­ing paid sig­na­ture gath­er­ers out­side of Wal­mart entrances. Pub­lic gath­er­ings are for­bid­den due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, and will like­ly remain pro­hib­it­ed through the dura­tion of the time­frame of the sig­na­ture dri­ve, which must be com­plet­ed by June 12th, 2020.

It is the Con­sti­tu­tion that spells out the time­frame for a ref­er­en­dum dri­ve (nine­ty days) and that time­frame can­not be altered, not even dur­ing times of emergency.

State law does not allow elec­tron­ic sig­na­ture gath­er­ing (which is good, because that would make the prob­lem of sig­na­ture fraud much, much worse) and Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman has said she can­not accept elec­tron­ic copies of peti­tions, either, not even if the elec­tron­ic copies are scans of sig­na­tures on print­ed petitions.

Wyman has pub­licly sug­gest­ed that ref­er­en­dum back­ers dis­trib­ute peti­tions elec­tron­i­cal­ly to sup­port­ers so they can osten­si­bly be print­ed at home, signed there, and pro­vid­ed to spon­sors through the Unit­ed States Postal Service.

But state law explic­it­ly requires peti­tions to be print­ed on EDP-sized paper or big­ger, and very few peo­ple have print­ers at home that can han­dle this size.

RCW 29A.72.100:

The per­son propos­ing the mea­sure shall print blank peti­tions upon sin­gle sheets of paper of good writ­ing qual­i­ty (includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to newsprint) not less than eleven inch­es in width and not less than four­teen inch­es in length. Each peti­tion at the time of cir­cu­lat­ing, sign­ing, and fil­ing with the sec­re­tary of state must con­sist of not more than one sheet with num­bered lines for not more than twen­ty sig­na­tures, with the pre­scribed warn­ing and title, be in the form required by RCW 29A.72.110, 29A.72.120, or 29A.72.130, and have a read­able, full, true, and cor­rect copy of the pro­posed mea­sure print­ed on the reverse side of the petition.

Inter­est­ing­ly, RCW 29A.72.170 (which is a sub­se­quent pro­vi­sion lat­er on the same chap­ter) does not men­tion incor­rect paper size as one of the grounds for refusal of a peti­tion by the Sec­re­tary of State. The Supreme Court in 2018 turned back a legal chal­lenge to Ini­tia­tive 1639 that con­tend­ed the peti­tions need­ed to be reject­ed because they were improp­er­ly formatted.

Nev­er­the­less, Repub­li­cans would be tak­ing a risk if they took up the print at home idea. The right wing has pre­vi­ous­ly tried to chal­lenge the sub­mis­sion of bal­lot mea­sure sig­na­tures on form grounds, and they’d be set­ting them­selves up for a poten­tial legal chal­lenge if they open­ly dis­re­gard­ed RCW 29A.72.100.

The Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office, as required by law, has already for­mu­lat­ed the bal­lot title for their ref­er­en­dum. It is as follows:

The leg­is­la­ture passed Engrossed Sub­sti­tute Sen­ate Bill 5395 con­cern­ing com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion [and vot­ers have filed a suf­fi­cient ref­er­en­dum peti­tion on this act].

This bill would require school dis­tricts to pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive age-appro­pri­ate sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion, as defined, for all stu­dents, con­sis­tent with state stan­dards, and excuse stu­dents if their par­ents request.

Should this mea­sure be:

[  ] Approved
[  ] Rejected

Because Ref­er­en­dum 90 is a ref­er­en­dum, the orga­niz­ers were not able to go “bal­lot title shop­ping” like many ini­tia­tive spon­sors (we’re look­ing at you, Tim Eyman) do. “Bal­lot title shop­ping” entails sub­mit­ting mul­ti­ple drafts with slight­ly dif­fer­ent pro­vi­sions in an attempt to obtain favor­able bal­lot title word­ing that polls well.

Since a ref­er­en­dum is a pro­posed vote on a bill that has already passed the Leg­is­la­ture, it isn’t pos­si­ble to go shop­ping like it would be with an ini­tia­tive. Titles can be chal­lenged through Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court, however.

NPI stands ready to defend ESSB 5395 should the right wing force a statewide vote on it. We believe this leg­is­la­tion is nec­es­sary and thought­ful­ly-writ­ten. It is telling that most of the right wing’s objec­tions to it are based on straw men argu­ments. Our research strong­ly sug­gests that most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans feel very dif­fer­ent­ly about this bill than the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s base does.

When 2020 ends, we are opti­mistic that ESSB 5395 will still be on the books.