In the News

Beginning this month, Washington officials have new authority to root out abuse and neglect of children housed in private boarding schools, residential treatment centers and the state’s school for the deaf. Senate Bill 5515 tasks the Department of Children, Youth and Families with investigating allegations and approving licenses for facilities that had ...

As lawmakers return to Olympia for the 2024 session, the Washington state Legislature is taking another run at eliminating the twice-yearly ritual of changing clocks. “I’m working with colleagues in Oregon and California and they’re going to be trying to get similar legislation through their states so that the Pacific time ...

If there were a law against doctors using their own sperm to inseminate their fertility patients, 33-year-old Brianna Hayes said it’s possible she might have lived a different life. Hayes was diagnosed with leukemia when she was 4 years old. Then Epstein-Barr virus. Then hip dysplasia. In total, she said, she went ...

LifeWire, a Bellevue, Washington-based organization that helps people impacted by domestic violence build, has presented Washington State Sen. Manka Dhingra with the Norm Maleng Award for her work to end domestic violence. “I am so honored to receive the 2023 Norm Maleng Award,” said Dhingra, chair of the Senate Law & ...

In its 50th year of providing services to persons with alcohol and other substance use disorders, Evergreen Recovery Centers was joined by Governor Jay Inslee to celebrate the completion of a new facility on its original campus on Summit Avenue in Everett, WA. The organization purchased a small house on ...

Representing two different generations of Cal grads, Keiser and Dhingra feel a kinship when fighting for abortion rights. Keiser completed her undergraduate degree in political science during the tumultuous 1960s, post-free Speech Movement but during the People’s Park era. Dhingra attended during the calmer ‘90s (“I mean, we had the ...

Gov. Jay Inslee signed five new pieces of legislation into law on Thursday aimed at protecting reproductive health-care rights in the state of Washington. “We are here to proclaim very vocally and very forcefully that we will not allow any state, or any Trump-appointed judge, to jeopardize a woman’s right ...

OLYMPIA, Wash. — The manufacture and sale of guns defined as assault weapons would be banned in the state under a bill that passed out of the Senate Law & Justice Committee Tuesday afternoon. House Bill 1240 defines dozens of guns that would qualify, including modifications that would add weapons to ...

Use of consumer reproductive health data would be much more restricted under House Bill 1155, the proposed “My Health, My Data Act.” The proposed law requires the consumer’s consent before sharing or collecting personal health data. This prohibits organizations from selling consumer health data not otherwise protected by law. After an extended ...

Democrats in the legislature are making procedural moves that will decide what the state’s new drug possession law will look like—an exercise that became necessary after the state supreme court’s 2021 ruling Blake v. State of Washington invalidated existing law.