Senate sends My Health, My Data Act back to WA House with strong private right of action

Moments ago, leg­is­la­tion request­ed by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son that would pro­vide strong new pro­tec­tions for Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ pri­vate health data was approved by the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate, bring­ing a cru­cial NPI leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ty one step clos­er to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s desk for signature.

By a vote of 27–21, the Sen­ate vot­ed to pass an amend­ed ver­sion of House Bill 1155, prime spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Van­dana Slat­ter (D‑48th Dis­trict: Belle­vue, Red­mond, Kirk­land, Med­i­na, the Points com­mu­ni­ties) that has the sup­port of Slat­ter, Sen­ate prime spon­sor Man­ka Dhin­gra (D‑45th Dis­trict: Red­mond, Kirk­land, Sam­mamish, Duvall), Fer­gu­son, and advo­cates like NPI.

In its cur­rent incar­na­tion (a strik­ing amend­ment offered by Sen­a­tor Dhin­gra that was devel­oped with Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Slat­ter), House Bill 1155 restores the bill to its orig­i­nal­ly con­tem­plat­ed scope, with a strong pri­vate right of action.

What that means is that if peo­ple find the pri­va­cy of their health data has been infringed upon, they can go to the courts to seek jus­tice them­selves, rather than hav­ing to rely on the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office as the sole enforcer of their rights.

That’s huge­ly impor­tant because it means that HB 1155 will have teeth. It will be a law that will offer real and mean­ing­ful pro­tec­tion to Wash­ing­to­ni­ans in an era when many states are try­ing to crim­i­nal­ize repro­duc­tive healthcare.

That includes Wash­ing­ton’s neigh­bor Ida­ho, where Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Brad Lit­tle just today — today! — signed an extreme right wing bill that attempts to restrict young Ida­hoans from trav­el­ing into neigh­bor­ing states to access legal abor­tion care. The bill out­ra­geous­ly attempts to crim­i­nal­ize the act of help­ing a young per­son get repro­duc­tive health­care, includ­ing in anoth­er state.

Accord­ing to Planned Par­ent­hood, it “remains unclear how the state intends to enforce the law, pos­ing seri­ous risks for indi­vid­u­als’ med­ical privacy.”

Leave it to extreme Repub­li­cans in Ida­ho to demon­strate why we need HB 1155.

New research released yes­ter­day by the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute at an event with Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Slat­ter, Sen­a­tor Dhin­gra, and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Fer­gu­son shows that HB 1155 is mas­sive­ly pop­u­lar. 76% sup­port the leg­is­la­tion’s pro­vi­sions, with sev­en out of ten vot­ers strong­ly sup­port­ive overall.

My Health, My Data is one of the most pop­u­lar ideas we have ever researched.

At our press con­fer­ence and here on The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, I urged the Sen­ate to take up this bill and keep it strong. Today, the Sen­ate did just that, reject­ing a slew of amend­ments from Repub­li­cans and Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Mark Mul­let that would have weak­ened it. Well done, Wash­ing­ton State Senate!

The roll call on the bill was as follows:

Roll Call
HB 1155
Con­sumer health data
3rd Read­ing & Final Pas­sage as Amend­ed by the Senate
4/5/2023

Yeas: 27; Nays: 21; Excused: 1

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Cleve­land, Con­way, Dhin­gra, Frame, Hasegawa, Hunt, Kauff­man, Keis­er, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, Lovick, Nguyen, Nobles, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Robin­son, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Salomon, Shew­make, Stan­ford, Trudeau, Valdez, Well­man, Wil­son (Claire)

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Boehnke, Braun, Dozi­er, For­tu­na­to, Gildon, Hawkins, Holy, King, MacEwen, McCune, Mul­let, Muz­za­ll, Pad­den, Rivers, Schoesler, Short, Tor­res, Wag­oner, War­nick, Wil­son (Jeff), Wil­son (Lyn­da)

Excused: Sen­a­tor Van De Wege

After Mul­let’s amend­ments failed, he joined Repub­li­cans in oppos­ing the bill. Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Kevin Van De Wege was excused. All oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors vot­ed yea to pass the bill. All Repub­li­cans vot­ed nay against it.

The bill now returns to the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for con­cur­rence. If the House accepts the Sen­ate’s good amend­ments, then the leg­is­la­tion can go to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee for bill action and no con­fer­ence will be nec­es­sary. We are close to hav­ing the My Health, My Data Act on the books! NPI will con­tin­ue its advo­ca­cy for this crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant bill until the job gets done.