Washington State Supreme Court hears oral argument in legal challenge to Eyman’s I‑976

The effort to stop Tim Eyman’s incred­i­bly destruc­tive Ini­tia­tive 976 from wreak­ing hav­oc upon Wash­ing­ton State’s com­mu­ni­ties is mov­ing into its final phase.

Today, the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court is hear­ing oral argu­ment in Garfield Coun­ty Trans­porta­tion Author­i­ty, et al. v. State of Wash­ing­ton, the case that asserts the ini­tia­tive is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al on a num­ber of fronts.

The jus­tices have giv­en each side a half hour to make their respec­tive cas­es, for a total of one hour of oral argu­ment. Nor­mal­ly, the jus­tices would hear from the attor­neys in per­son in the Tem­ple of Jus­tice, but due to COVID-19, argu­ments will be pre­sent­ed remote­ly, with all par­tic­i­pants using video­con­fer­enc­ing technology.

TVW is livestream­ing the oral argu­ment for every­one’s ben­e­fit; if you’d like to fol­low along with us, you are encour­aged and wel­come to.

Oral argu­ment will begin at 1:30 PM.

The Court’s deci­sion (when it is hand­ed down) will be the final word on I‑976. King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge Mar­shall Fer­gu­son pre­vi­ous­ly upheld I‑976 in part while rul­ing oth­er pro­vi­sions uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The plain­tiffs in the case (now the appel­lants) want the Supreme Court to over­turn Fer­gu­son’s rul­ing and nix I‑976 in its entire­ty. The defen­dants (now the respon­dents) would like the injunc­tion lift­ed and the mea­sure allowed to go into effect.

I‑976 is cur­rent­ly blocked from imple­men­ta­tion by an injunc­tion orig­i­nal­ly issued by Judge Fer­gu­son late last year. The issuance of that injunc­tion pre­vent­ed I‑976 from going into effect on Decem­ber 5th, 2019 as Tim Eyman had intended.

It is com­mon for sev­er­al months to pass in between when the Court hears oral argu­ment in a case and when it reach­es and releas­es a deci­sion. Oral argu­ments are only pre­sent­ed to the Court after all the par­ties have had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a writ­ten record for the jus­tices in the form of briefs.

As oral argu­ment pro­gress­es, NPI’s Bob­by Aiy­er and I will update this post with our obser­va­tions and reflec­tions. We’ve already pub­lished a primer on the case over at NPI’s Per­ma­nent Defense which pro­vides help­ful con­text.

UPDATE, 1:35 PM (Andrew): We’re off and run­ning. Our friend Matthew J. Segal of Paci­fi­ca Law Group is pre­sent­ing first for the appel­lants, explain­ing how the I‑976 bal­lot title is false and mis­lead­ing. He will be fol­lowed in a few min­utes by co-coun­sel David Hack­ett, rep­re­sent­ing King County.

UPDATE, 1:38 PM (Bob­by): Segal wast­ed no time div­ing into the issues of the case, focus­ing on logrolling and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, with a par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the mis­lead­ing “except vot­er-approved charges” lan­guage in the bal­lot title. Segal point­ed out there are “more pro­vi­sions [hav­ing] to do with Sound Tran­sit than thir­ty dol­lar tabs” despite Sound Tran­sit not being men­tioned in the bal­lot title.

UPDATE, 1:42 PM (Andrew): Good ques­tion from Jus­tice Gon­za­lez for Segal about the issues raised by San Juan Coun­ty’s ami­cus brief, per­tain­ing to the por­tion of I‑976 that repeals fund­ing for fer­ry districts.

UPDATE, 1:48 PM (Bob­by): Just pri­or to Jus­tice Gon­za­lez’s ques­tion, Chief Jus­tice Stephens asked if actions on bonds are always a dif­fer­ent sub­ject than tax­a­tion or whether the spe­cif­ic lan­guage in I‑976 makes it an Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 19 vio­la­tor. Segal answered that the spe­cif­ic lan­guage in Sec­tion 16 refer­ring to “the RTA” and out­lin­ing dates for Sound Tran­sit to per­form cer­tain actions are a dif­fer­ent sub­ject from lim­it­ing state-lev­el vehi­cle fees to a catchy number.

UPDATE, 1:54 PM (Andrew): David Hack­ett of King Coun­ty is now pre­sent­ing, sum­ma­riz­ing a sec­ond set of the plain­tiff-appel­lants’ argu­ments. He’s focus­ing on the defects asso­ci­at­ed with the pro­vi­sion that tries to base future vehi­cle fees on Kel­ley Blue Book val­ue, a pro­vi­sion that King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge Mar­shall Fer­gu­son already found to be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Hack­ett con­clud­ed his pre­sen­ta­tion by quot­ing from one of my posts about I‑976 (!) from late last year, in which I called the I‑976 bal­lot title a blaz­ing dump­ster fire.

UPDATE, 2 PM (Bob­by): It’s the defen­dants’ turn to address the Court. Alan Copsey is pre­sent­ing for the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office. He had bare­ly said any­thing before he got inter­rupt­ed, by Jus­tice Steven Gon­za­lez, who expressed con­cern about the sec­tion of the bal­lot title that pur­ports to exempt vot­er-approved vehi­cle fees from repeal by I‑976. Jus­tice Gon­za­lez repeat­ed­ly asked Copsey to explain how I‑976 cre­ates an exemp­tion to which Copsey replied that the peo­ple can leg­is­late for them­selves and make new law at any point. Gon­za­lez points out that is always the case. Copsey also con­ced­ed that he is unaware of any pri­or vot­er-approved fees not impact­ed by I‑976 – a rather large concession.

UPDATE, 2:06 PM (Andrew): Copsey is game­ly try­ing to mount a defense of I‑976 despite hav­ing pret­ty much noth­ing to work with. I‑976 has so many con­sti­tu­tion­al defects that the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office had to come up with some pret­ty ridicu­lous argu­ments in order to assert that the mea­sure is con­sti­tu­tion­al. The jus­tices seem very skep­ti­cal of Copsey’s arguments.

UPDATE, 2:14 PM (Bob­by): Chief Jus­tice Stephens recalled Copsey’s response to Jus­tice Gonzalez’s ques­tion and asked what would be the case if the excep­tion wasn’t in the title. Copsey points out there could hypo­thet­i­cal­ly be a sub­ject-in-title vio­la­tion. But then Jus­tice Gon­za­lez won­dered if, if the title was word­ed to “include” the repeal of cer­tain vot­er-approved fees, it would be more accurate.

UPDATE, 2:16 PM (Andrew): Jus­tice McCloud just engaged in a back and forth with Copsey about the clar­i­ty of an ear­li­er answer that he gave. At the end of the exchange, she referred back to a state­ment that Copsey made and remarked, “That could be a prob­lem for you.” Copsey may well be think­ing the same thing.