4 recent WA State legal decisions that matter to you

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:03]Thank you for watching. My name is Glenn Morgan and welcome back to another episode of We the Govern. So today again reporting from Washington State. I just want to talk about four different Supreme Court ca or four different court cases anyway, legal decisions in Washington state and frankly why I believe these do matter to you. And these are all decisions that have come down over the last week in Washington state and they've made the news, but I don't think we have really really linked together the some of the significance of these cases. And I hope that in covering them in one quick video today, it'll help you better understand some of the legal challenges and opportunities that exist in Washington state uh and the unfortunately many of them are in court right now and why this matters. So, in case you haven't done so already, just a quick reminder. Please hit the like and subscribe button. It's down below. Uh, feel free to share this video with others. I guarantee you that uh especially if you have any liberal friends, they've probably never seen these videos and uh that'll give them a chance to file a complaint with YouTube or Google for watching them and I'd be daring to be exposed to any alternative opinions. However, the since this channel is heavily shadowbanned frequently by Google and YouTube, the more you share it, the more you hit the like, the more you comment on the video down below, uh it does make an impact with how many people are able to see videos like this, which is certainly rebellious content in the state of Washington. So, let's just get into these court cases. I think they matter.

[00:01:27]Uh, and I think that sometimes when we we might talk I do talk about a number of different cases here over time, but uh I think these four matter and two of them, by the way, even though I had a picture here of the Washington State Supreme Court building, the Temple of Justice, which is uh what it's laughingly called right now, uh, two of these are actually from the Thirsten County Superior Court. And I point that out because obviously rulings and decisions made in a lower court which would be a superior court of thirst county uh don't those are usually just temporary rulings in the sense that if it's a matter of any importance to the political establishment it's going to be appealed and it's going to go up to a higher court and the lower court judges do know that especially in Thirsten County which is the court where the constitution usually goes to die in Washington state. However, the this is actually kind of an unusual story because we had two rulings that actually uh paid attention to the Constitution, which is a rare event in the Thirstston County Superior Court. And I think it really does matter. And it really all begins with the uh p push through that the Democrats had. And this was clearly a partisan bill. Uh Democrats all on one side and Republicans in opposition to it. And the public was also strongly in opposition to it as were all the elected sheriffs. and that was this attempt to put uh a lot more rules and regulations around who can run for sheriff. Now, the real significance of this wasn't so much that they were putting standards and rules around who could run for sheriff.

[00:02:57]It was really that was one of them. And of course, this is just another barrier to entry to prevent people from being able to run for uh elected sheriff in Washington state, which of the 39 counties in Washington state, 38 of them have elected sheriffs. The only one, of course, he's gone down the yellow brick road of an appointed sheriff, which they have tried before in the past and changed their mind on and now they change it back, is King County, of course, which is the largest county in Washington state and the one that uh basically commits the greatest level of political experiments with bad effect.

[00:03:27]The other 38 counties still have elected sheriffs. And the bill that was passed very much so was targeting these sheriffs because of political anger by the establishment mostly, which is all Democrats in Washington state at this point. And they didn't like the fact that sheriffs could represent the people who elected them. And they wanted to have they be in the political establishment, the governor's office, and the appointees that he puts on some of these commissions. They wanted to have unelected bureaucrats given the authority to remove elected officials and replace them with preferred sheriffs uh in the future. That's really what this was all about. There were other nuances and details to the bill, but that was essentially it. And that's what made it controversial. And uh that's why there was such strong opposition to it.

[00:04:10]And all sheriffs in the state of Washington, to my knowledge, except for of course they appointed one in King County. But the rest of them, if they spoke up at all on this issue, they were opposed to it. So what do you know? As predicted, we knew this was going to be challenged. They were actually two different lawsuits kind of in parallel.

[00:04:26]There was similarities between the cases, but they were slightly different issues and they came before the same judge, Judge Showler in Thirsten County.

[00:04:32]This is a picture of her pulled off of the Thirsten County Superior Court website. And just for full disclosure, I have argued been because I've been in court so often, uh, I've been in front of her, this judge, as well as many other judges in Thirstston County. Uh, in fact, at one time I think I was in front of all judges that were currently at the Thirst County Superior Court.

[00:04:51]However, uh, it's just important to note that both of these cases essentially had the same outcome, which is Judge Showler intervened and put a stay on on the implementation of this law. What that essentially means is that it's a pause in implementing the law while the facts of the case are argued in the future and the main reason for the decision. And I'll give you some links down below that you can go to where people describe this in a little bit more detail is that the plaintiffs, which are mostly the elected sheriffs here, uh that on the merits they seem likely to prevail on a plain reading of the Washington State Constitution, something rarely done in Thirst County Superior Court and certainly never done at the Washington State Supreme Court. uh that clearly they can't go in and impose these unusual restrictions exclusively on the sheriff since the sheriff is a constitutional position that's been clearly defined in the state constitution. In order for them to do this, they'd have to go in and change the state constitution. And secondly, the other issue really that probably drove this day is that it would have direct and immediate impact on uh the plaintiffs in these cases. They were candidates who were going to run for office. This week is filing week. She made this ruling uh both rulings last week, Thursday and Friday. Uh and basically said you can't enforce this right now. It would prevent some of these people from being able to run for office, from being able to file to run for office and that happens next week.

[00:06:15]And so therefore emergency stay and we can argue about the merits on this moving forward. But she did a pretty good job if you look at the video in that case. Now, I will point out that I think the Washington Gun Law channel, and I'll link to his video down below, did a really good job just covering this a little bit more. Uh, he tends to do bills, uh, review legislation that has to and court cases that have to do with gun law, but he also touches on a number of different peripheral issues. I thought he did a really good job in this video. He's not the only one that talked about it. Brand Cruz, Ari Hoffman, Jason Rants, uh, Center Square. There were articles and videos about this all over the place. However, I did like his video, so I've linked to that down below if you want to look at it a little bit more as well. Those are important cases.

[00:07:00]Something I don't think many people though who have discussed is the significance of this being in front of Judge Sher in Thirsten County. And the reason why I want to point this out is that living in Thirsten County myself, I've had some experience and familiarity with both the judges and the other elected officials that are here. And Judge Shaller, she was first elected in 2012. That's obvious. However, one of the things that is kind of quiet on her resume that doesn't get discussed a lot was when she did to file uh to run for office, she lived in Pierce County and her residency was challenged in court by a local Democrat. uh they had a preferred candidate the Democrats wanted on the superior court judge and we do elect our judges in Washington state even if you don't it doesn't appear that way and uh essentially there was a very clear constitutional argument that went all the way up the Supreme Court that was upheld to the Supreme Court Washington state supreme court because it was so clear that the state constitution clearly allowed judges to run in counties in which they don't they do not reside that was very specifically allowed at the founding of the state mostly this was done at the time I believe when you look back in the historical reasons for this because there weren't necessarily enough judges living in some of the more sparsely populated counties and there was a lot of concern with their founding fathers in the state that they wanted the ability of qualified people to be in those judicial positions and they didn't want the residency requirement to prevent uh a given county that might have a small population from having a good quality judge there. And so this was uh the main argument that was used against her. And why this matters in this case is that in my opinion she was probably one of the only judges in Thirst County Superior Court who had really close familiarity with the state constitution as it applied to qualifications of the elected officials.

[00:08:47]And this is essentially one of the main arguments that was brought to in front of her court uh with this uh attempt these two different lawsuits against this um anti-electleed sheriff's bill.

[00:08:59]So I think this is a big deal really they had the best judge they could have gotten in Thirsten County. And again county superior court is where the constitution usually goes to die. The second court of course where the constitution state constitution in particular usually gets crushed is in the Washington state supreme court itself. We have two cases. I'll jump into those two. I promised you four. We already talked about the two in uh Thirstston County Superior Court. Uh here's the two that are in the Washington State Supreme Court. So essentially final ruling on these and uh these actually do matter. The first one which made the news just recently in the last day or so uh as I'm recording this which has to do with the income tax bill that Bob Ferguson and his cronies pushed through down our throats in the legislature and again completely partisan Democrats on one side and Republicans in opposition. Now sure they had a couple Democrats who were in in competitive districts so they shifted them into opposition at the last minute for a vote but it was essentially a very very partisan bill. also strongly opposed by the largest number of people ever recorded in Washington state history because everybody knows that an income tax on millionaires, which is what they were lying about, uh would be clearly applied to others at some point in time in the future. We all know this.

[00:10:15]Everyone knows it, including the supporters, but lying is just what they do. Now, Brian Haywood brought a quick challenge against it initially. Now, this is the first in what is inevitably going to be a series of legal battles over this issue. However, very narrow uh challenge that he had and the reason why it had a rocket docket going all the way up to the Supreme Court and what this had to do with is the ability to file a referendum. Uh a referendum has existed as an option for Washington state voters since the constitutional change was made in 2000 or 1912. And it also allowed for the initiative process. So referendum and initiative and there's really three different types. A referendum is the repeal of an of a bill that the legislature passes. And the two different initiatives are either an initiative to the people, which goes directly on the ballot that year, or an initiative to the legislature, which essentially gives the legislature the opportunity to pass it as law, or it goes to the ballot next year. All of that was incorporated by activists at the time who had fought for this for about it was about 15 years, a little bit longer that it took for them to finally get this as a constitutional amendment back in the day. Over the years, the Washington state bureaucracy and the legislature has done its best to water down the referendum process because they hate it when the people come back and uh overturn bills that the lobbyists and special interests kind of squeeze through the legislative session.

[00:11:37]And so one of the ways that they found that they could overcome or prevent a referendum is to put an emergency clause on it, which when originally created as an as a concept was intended to only apply to things that were genuinely an emergency. It it it's a critical function of surviving through catastrophic times in Washington state.

[00:11:57]We can't allow the people to overturn it. But of course, that concept once you put the camel's nose under the tent, that became highly abused and it's abused every single legislative session now hundreds of times because everything is an emergency or they use this clause that essentially uh prevents you from doing a referendum. And why that matters is that a referendum is easier to get on the ballot because it takes half as many signatures. So, it costs half half as much effort and time and money as a full-blown initiative to the people. and you can do it in a very short period of time. So that's what's going on here.

[00:12:31]And um Brian filed with the Let's Go Washington folk was uh filed that specific challenge which went on a rocket docket of course right to the Supreme Court because time was critical on this kind of a case because it has an immediate impact this year and every day that goes by is a day you can't collect signatures for a uh a referendum. and the Washington State Supreme Court waited as long as they could and then of to make it harder of course and because they are hyperartisan now in most of their decision-making processes. They ruled against it and in favor of the abuse that uh the legislature and the attorney general's office who's exposed in this process as well uh that they've misused the uh emergency clause to ensure that you'll never be able to vote on a piece of legislation that the political class and the insiders really want. That's a pretty significant setback for people who actually read the plain language of the state constitution and the law, but it is what it is. It was a bad ruling that just came down recently. On the better front, and a ruling that I think is actually a good one, in one of the last areas of Washington state law that still exists as a place where the Washington State Supreme Court will sometimes accidentally uh commit an act of honesty. uh they ruled recently against the DCYF which is the department of children and youth uh area where foster children and other programs are run.

[00:13:53]It's a massive sinkhole of fraud and bad behavior most of the time by the bureaucracy. A lot of your tax dollars go to get wasted and stolen and fraudulently squandered there. However, this was a public records case by foster children, former foster children who were abused and subject to abuse in that system and they want to have access to the public records which would sometimes be classified as attorney client privilege. But in limited cases, they believe that they should have access to it so that they could address the abuse experience that they had and try to stop this going forward, try to expose it more. Something that I think most of us could agree with. Of course, if you're Governor Bob Ferguson or the attorney general, Nick Brown, or Governor Eninsley before him, the last thing you want is the truth to come out. And so, of course, the state worked very hard to hide and conceal these records. But at the end of the day, the Supreme Court ruled against the state, unusually, saying that no, these records can be exposed to the truth. That's a good ruling. It's a good ruling for uh public uh transparency, and it's a good ruling for the public records act, and it is also something that people should be paying attention to. public records act litigation can oftentimes thread the needle even in a very sup corrupt Supreme Court like we have in Washington state. Speaking of which, we have nine judges here in Washington state sitting on our state supreme court. However, there's going to be five vacancies because of uh retirements and um appointments that have come up and this is a big deal. And I want to point this out because in Washington state we theoretically elect our judges. And I say theoretically because there's been kind of an unspoken uh almost like a mafia sort of uh plan that the judges hate being up for election and you can make pluses and minuses in the arguments against u judges running for office but inevitably these are political appointments and it is very at least people in Washington state have an opportunity to replace terrible and bad judges and we have so many of them that we could replace here. However, what they've historically done is judges who get elected as incumbents and they once they're an incumbent, they're elected 98% of the time, 99% of the time. So once they're as an incumbent, what they do is they decide to retire about a year or so before they would otherwise have to come before the voters again in theory. And by doing so, then when there's a vacancy in a court position for a judge position, then the governor gets to appoint those judges. And the vast majority of judges in the state of Washington were appointed originally in their judicial history. And so they get to be appointed and they get to run as an incumbent judge, which again, as I mentioned, means almost guaranteed a reelection even though they didn't weren't elected the first time. And then once they're into the gravy train, they get to keep being reelected unless they uh come out and say they're Republican or they believe in reading the Washington State Constitution, in which case they might be at risk.

[00:16:51]Nevertheless, there is an opportunity if there's serious candidates to run to replace literally a majority of judges on the Supreme Court. Now, it's unusual that you could replace a majority of judges on the Supreme Court in one election cycle. Usually, you only have three, but because the large number of retirements that happened recently, um there's five. I mean, this is unusual.

[00:17:13]uh nobody has seen this like this before. This is an opportunity to make a significant impact in the makeup of the Washington State Supreme Court. And with the horrific uh trend of terrible decisions that they've made that are so partisan and so biased and so ignorant of the Washington State Constitution, this could be an opportunity to put a couple of sane people in there. And even a few sane people make a difference. So, I want to point out uh if you're paying attention to the judicial races, and this is filing week as I'm doing this video, so we don't know who all the candidates are going to be, but I believe that all five of these uh incumbents uh who are all bad and totally all of them need to be replaced. uh will have challengers, legitimate challengers uh against them, people who have a chance to get in there and potentially will actually be able uh have some history and experience with actually reading the Washington State Constitution and would clearly be doing a better job than the goofballs that Ferguson and the hyperartisan people that Ferguson or Ensley have appointed to this Washington state supreme court. So, I think this is a big deal. This is a significant impact in light of these four cases and many others that are going to come out in future years and others that are being filed to be decided next year and the year after. I think that it is some one of the most important public races that are going on right now will be these judicial candidates. So paying attention to who the opponents are I think and the people who are challengers I think is going to be an important uh thing for any voter in Washington state to pay attention to. Then if you live in King County and they send you 100 ballots, make sure that you correctly address uh all those ballots with the candidates who do need to get in because I'm sure that absolutely never happens in King County. So with that, I just want to remind people, stay engaged, stay involved, pay attention. If you don't show up, then the other guys usually do, and that always ends up resulting in bad outcomes. It doesn't mean that showing up just once is going to change the world and bring on utopia. That's not how it works. But if you do want to make an impact and if you care about the future at all, you do have to show up regularly because I'll close this video like I do all of mine. The future belongs to those who show up [music] [music] [music] now. Out of my house or in the driveway.

[00:19:44]I'm [music] halfway out of town with the wind blows down. I get away when I want to be around. I move about and I'm going where I want to go.

[00:20:00]Heat. Heat.

[00:20:03][music] >> [music]