The third of six submitted initiatives to the 2024 Washington State Legislature sponsored by Republican State Party Chair Jim Walsh and funded by right wing multimillionaire Brian Heywood was certified today, which means it is destined for the November 2024 ballot for approval or rejection by voters.
Initiative 2081 would undermine the ability of youth to access gender affirming and reproductive care services through their schools, jeopardizing carefully crafted safe harbor policies. It is an attempt to bring the right wing’s education culture wars to Washington, and would erode the trusted relationships that exist between students, their teachers, and their healthcare providers.
According to the Secretary of State’s Elections Division, 28,527 pages of signatures were received for I‑2081, containing 449,646 lines.
324,516 valid signatures are currently required to qualify a statewide initiative.
Initiative 2081 had a sufficient cushion of extra signatures to qualify for a random sample check as allowed by state law, which consisted of 13,490 signatures.
Of those, 10,825 were accepted and 2,665 were reviewed. 2,529 signatures were determined to be invalid, and twenty-four were determined to be duplicate.
Secretary Hobbs today transmitted a certification message to the Legislature affixed with the state seal, advising of I‑2081’s qualification.
Legislative staff have given I‑2081 its own bill-style page on leg.wa.gov.
The ballot title for I‑2081 is as follows:
Initiative Measure No. 2081 concerns parental rights relating to their children’s public school education.
This measure would provide certain rights to parents and guardians of public-school children, including rights to review instructional materials, inspect records, receive certain notifications, and opt out of certain activities, like sexual-health education.
Should this measure be enacted into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]
The summary is as follows:
This measure would allow parents and guardians of public-school children to review instructional materials and inspect student records, including health and disciplinary records, upon request. It would require public schools to provide parents and guardians with certain notifications, including about medical services given and when students are taken off campus; access to calendars and certain policies; and written notice and opportunities to opt students out of comprehensive sexual-health education and answering certain surveys or assignments.
Legislators have three choices as to how to respond to I‑2081:
- Do nothing, in which case it goes to voters
- Adopt the measure into law
- Send it to the November 2024 ballot with an alternative
NPI opposes Initiative 2081 and is working for the measure’s defeat. If you’d like to help oppose I‑2081 and its brethren, you can donate to Stop Greed here.
“The Washington State Legislature has taken important steps in recent years to prevent deaths and injuries resulting from unnecessary high-speed police pursuits, and to ensure that all students feel safe in Washington’s public schools,” the ACLU of Washington noted last year in a statement opposing I‑2081. “Let’s not allow reactionary forces to roll back this progress for civil liberties and civil rights.”
We agree and will be working to ensure I‑2081 does not harm Washington youth.
Parents and only parents have the right to decide on the issues in initiation 2081. The government needs to stay out of family decisions. A child does not even start developing their frontal lobe until their twenty’s so they don’t make rational decisions or choices. This is the United States not Russia or China, we don’t want our every moment being told what to do.
Hi Barbara, thanks for stopping by The Cascadia Advocate.
We at NPI are strong believes in individual liberty and privacy. But sometimes the government has to be involved in “family decisions” — that’s why we have laws protecting people’s freedoms and family courts to deal with issues that come up. If abuse is taking place within a household, for example, society has an interest in helping the victim(s) of that abuse escape it, and hold the perpetrators accountable.
Young people have rights as individuals that need to be respected. Current law strikes a balance between parents’ rights and students’ individual rights, and I‑2081 would upset that balance. We therefore oppose it.
It’s also important to note that older people don’t necessarily make “rational decisions or choices”. People of all ages actually don’t think rationally by default — research has demonstrated that we are emotional beings, first and foremost. We have the capability to think rationally, but we mostly use that capability to justify how we’re feeling!