In the News

OLYMPIA — The Washington Legislature on Tuesday passed a bill to require law enforcement officers to intervene if they witness another officer using excessive force in an encounter. Senate Bill 5066 is one of a slew of proposals designed to reshape police tactics and oversight of law enforcement in the wake ...

After years of trying, Washington legislators appear poised to free up doctors at Catholic hospitals to provide medically necessary abortions when pregnancies go wrong. The legislation would allow patients to sue a hospital if they are denied medical care to hasten miscarriages or terminate nonviable pregnancies that threaten the patients’ health. ...

Lawmakers in Olympia are scrambling to respond to a Washington Supreme Court decision that declared the state’s law criminalizing drug possession unconstitutional because it did not require prosecutors to prove intent. Dueling proposals reflect the range of philosophical beliefs about how the state should respond to drug possession and use — ...

About a month after the Washington Supreme Court struck down the state's drug possession law and effectively decriminalized controlled substances statewide, lawmakers in Olympia have introduced nine pieces of legislation to address the ruling's major ramifications, which include $100 million tabs from courts and prosecutors who now need to clear records and ...

A group of Democratic lawmakers have met in recent weeks, attempting to understand the decision and strategize next steps. Sen. Manka Dhingra, who works as a Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney in King County, has framed the Blake decision as an opportunity to build on the state’s progress toward a public-health ...

OLYMPIA, WA — State legislators are considering a new legal framework for drug possession, one month after the state's highest court struck down Washington's felony drug statute. In February, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the state's "strict liability" statute was overreaching and did not require prosecutors to ...

OLYMPIA — When state House lawmakers earlier this month passed a bill that creates a clear standard for when police officers can use physical force, DeVitta Briscoe said it felt like a victory moment in a football game. “Like how you see in a touchdown, I screamed in my living room,” ...

The Washington Supreme Court has struck down the state's felony drug possession law because it doesn't require prosecutors to prove that someone knowingly or intentionally possessed drugs.