State Supreme Court says voters cannot run a referendum to overturn the income tax

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]We've been waiting for a ruling from the state supreme court on an effort by Let's Go Washington to run a referendum on the income tax on millionaires. So, you'll recall that as they often do, they abuse the the emergency clause and the necessity clause. They'll put an emergency clause Democrats at the end of any bill that they think people will want to run a referendum on. and they'll they'd use this time a necessity clause to tag it on to the end, which based on court precedent, precludes you, the voters, from being able to say yay or nay. Why do they do this? Uh well, if you watch the show all the time, you already know the answer. It's because a referendum is much easier uh and it's much less expensive. And so they want to make it as difficult and as expensive as possible for the voters to exercise their constitutional rights to put a check on the legislature. And so by prohibiting the the referendum now automatically it's going to have to be an initiative which is going to cost way more money. Uh you have to collect more signatures. And so they're just trying to I don't know bleed let's go Washington dry I guess. So but even though there was the necessity clause Brian Haywood thought you know what let's challenge that. let's challenge that this is actually a necessity that voters should not have a right to weigh in on. And so he challenged it. Let's go did to the Washington State Supreme Court. I believe they heard the case last Thursday. They came out with a decision late yesterday. They've blocked the bid to run a referendum. uh not a surprise because I will say the president is is in line with that and it's very clear in the past that they've said that yeah I mean you can't run a referendum if they put one of these things on. But here's the thing as disappointing maybe as that ruling is I actually think it helps the ongoing legal battle the actual court battle against the income tax. So, let me read the statement from Let's Go Washington.

[00:01:59]So, uh, in response to the ruling, uh, Let's Go Washington's founder, Brian Haywood, issued the following statement.

[00:02:05]We strongly disagree with this interpretation from the state supreme court. However, as they have relied so heavily on precedent in this ruling for this court to be consistent, they should be expected to rely on precedent to reject the unconstitutional income tax as well. The income tax has 93 years of precedent and has been affirmed seven times. Not only have voters rejected it every time it's been on the ballot, but our or own court system has ruled it to be out of line with state law. Literally genius. And I don't know if this what Brian Haywood had planned the whole time because there was some consternation amongst conservatives and sort of business-minded Democrats who are helping to fund the fight against the income tax. there was some disagreement on whether they should even try this uh lawsuit to challenge the referendum because they're like it's not going to be successful because of precedent. It's sort of a waste of time. But when you think about what they did here, it's sort of it's sort of genius. The Supreme Court, the state supreme court, which is the same court that will be tasked with deciding the lawsuit against the income tax that's moving forward, said, "Yeah, we we can't let you run a referendum because there's all these years of precedent saying that you can't run a referendum when it has a necessity clause on it." And as Brian Haywood points out, well, there's many more years of precedent that income is property under our state constitution, and therefore you cannot have an income tax of this nature. So, it would just it would I mean it would be phenomenal. It would be insane if the same court comes back and says, "Oh, we couldn't rule in your favor then because of precedent, but now we're ruling against you and throwing a hundred years of precedent out the window." So, I and I actually ran into someone, hi Kevin, uh when I was getting coffee this morning, nice guy, and he was saying um I I don't know if he had read some headlines and thought that this was the state supreme court ruling that basically threw out the lawsuit. That's not this. Um, this I think was an expectation that it wasn't going to go the way of Let's Go Washington. I think it hands Rob McKenna and Phil Talmage, who are doing the actual lawsuit, a really, really nice talking point, uh, and gives them an advantage. So, I actually think this is a good thing. Now, wouldn't it have been nice if they said, "Yeah, you can run a referendum." Of course, that would have been great, but it just wasn't going to happen. So, now they have this nice little talking point they can use in the lawsuit, and Let's Go Washington will immediately start to run an initiative.

[00:04:31]So, you'll be seeing those in a community near you available to sign soon. And as I always say, go to let's go Washington.com because they'll mail the the sheets right to your house if you've and they're already going to do that if you've signed some of the Let's Go Washington initiatives in the past.

[00:04:46]They'll they'll sign you a pre, you know, uh, postage paid envelope so you can sign it, get some of your friends and neighbors to sign it, and then send it in. So, let's let's not be deterred because let's go Washington has a great track record of running initiatives and they'll have enough signatures on this thing. Lickety split.