| Welcome to 2025! The legislative session in Washington state starts on January 13th, and we wanted to share an update about our legislative priorities. These are the policy objectives where DRW is leading or working with other stakeholders to lead. You can read more about how DRW is supporting other legislative efforts on this page. We also know that many of you and many of our allied organizations are working on other important legislation. If you’re interested in learning about how the state legislative process works or sharing the advocacy efforts of a group or organization you’re involved with, please join our weekly Cross Disability Advocacy Network (CDAN) meetings, which will take place Thursdays throughout the session from 6-7:30pm. Please email David Lord for information on how to join the meetings. |
| Disability Rights Washington’s 2025 Legislative Priorities – Lead Agenda Eliminate the use of isolation and reduce restraints in schools. Student restraint and isolation belong to a set of practices called aversive interventions – painful stimuli used to control human behavior — that followed the de-institutionalization of students with disabilities into the public education system in the late 60s and early 70s. Most aversive interventions were banned by law in 2015, but restraint and isolation were left on the books for instances where a student exhibits “imminent likelihood of serious harm.” Neuroscience of learning tells us these practices have no educational or therapeutic benefit and can cause lifelong harm for both the student and the adult involved. A review of restraint and isolation use in Washington also shows these practices are used for instances other than imminent harm and disproportionately impact students in K-5, students of color, students who are homeless or in foster care, and students who are low-income. DRW worked with students, families, and education stakeholders to build policy that drives resources and tools into the classroom to better preclude and manage student crisis as an alternative to restraint and isolation use. This builds on work from prior years where multiple school districts and OSPI have been leading efforts to eliminate isolation and reduce restraint. Decrease the use of solitary confinement by increasing procedural protections for people facing disciplinary sanctions in prison. More than 700 people are currently in solitary confinement in our state prisons, a significant percentage of whom have disabilities. This year DRW is working with a coalition of solitary survivors and family members to pass HB 1137, a bill to reduce the Department of Corrections’ (DOC) over-reliance on administrative segregation by increasing the procedural protections of the prison-initiated disciplinary process. Currently, incarcerated people can receive a serious infraction for over 100 reasons and be placed in administrative segregation pending a hearing. While awaiting a hearing, they live in solitary confinement, often for months, in conditions widely recognized as torture. At the hearing, people can be found guilty based on “some evidence” of prohibited conduct, a vague standard that often allows infractions based on flimsy or even contradictory evidence. This process is employed across the board, disproportionately impacting people with disabilities, often resulting in infractions and extended solitary placements for disability related behaviors. To reduce the number of people experiencing administrative segregation, this bill would: change the evidentiary standard for DOC infractions from “some evidence” to “preponderance of evidence”; narrow the types of infractions that warrant the use of administrative segregation; alert the corrections ombuds about any placement past 45 days; and protect peoples’ education, housing, and job placement while they are in this restrictive setting. If passed, HB 1137 would be a significant step towards reforming the prison’s use of solitary and reducing the number of people placed in isolation, including people with disabilities. Implement Trueblood Settlement Agreement including improvements to existing programs and reducing barriers to outpatient competency restoration. DRW is continuing to propose changes to RCW 10.77 in alignment with the Trueblood settlement agreement that will promote diversion from the competency and criminal court systems, add staffing to existing community-based programs for Trueblood class members, and encourage the use of outpatient competency restoration over inpatient restoration when possible. Change the Assault 3 statute to create behavioral health exception.Many states, including Washington, convert what would otherwise be misdemeanor assault into felony assault if the victim is a health care worker. Increasing the criminal charge to a felony is meant to discourage patients from committing minor assaults that would otherwise only qualify as a misdemeanor—things like spitting, shoving, or throwing something at a nurse without causing injury—by treating that minor misdemeanor conduct as a felony. In Washington, this “felony up-charge” based on victim status is codified in RCW 9A.36.031. In 2020, Disability Rights Washington investigated incidents where patients were charged with assault from a treatment facility setting in King County and Spokane County. DRW found that patients frequently faced felony assault charges for incidents that often had no visible or lasting injury, patients were arrested out of a health care facility even if they were involuntarily committed or seeking behavioral health treatment, and patients waited weeks to months in jail pending the outcome of their criminal case. These cases included incidents such as a patient throwing apple juice at a nurse or bumping their wheelchair into a nurse’s knee. Although the intent behind this law was to try to reduce the unacceptably high rates of violence that nurses and other health care providers face, data shows that current law does not deter assaults and workplace violence continues to increase. DRW is working with the King County Department of Public Defense and the National Alliance on Mental Illness to introduce legislation that would change current law so that anyone who is involuntarily detailed or voluntarily seeking inpatient behavioral health treatment cannot be charged with a felony assault against a health care provider unless they actually commit felony assault. If what they do while in mental health crisis only qualifies as misdemeanor assault, they should only be charged with misdemeanor assault. This bill does not change the ability to charge misdemeanor and felony assaultive conduct against health care providers, it simply gets rid of the felony upcharge based on victim status. Include transit rider representation on public transit boards. DRW is continuing to champion legislation that would add transit rider representation to transit agency boards. Nobody wants transit to succeed more than the people who rely on it day in and day out, but our voices are continually left out of decision-making processes. In Washington, a Public Transit Benefit Areas (PTBA) is a governing body established by state code to create and run transit agencies. Thirty-one out of Washington State’s 38 Transit agencies are governed under the PTBA structure. By Washington state law, these transit agency boards are composed of local elected officials, many of which don’t often ride transit. While many transit agencies support citizen advisory committees (CACs) for community member input, there is no assurance that community feedback will be incorporated into decision-making. Our proposed legislation would amend Washington state law to allow PTBAs to appoint two voting members to their governing boards, one who is transit-reliant and one from an organization that serves transit-reliant communities. End exclusionary employment practices with unnecessary driver license requirements. DRW is proposing legislation to extend that protection to all job seekers and prohibit all employers from requiring driver licenses for jobs when driving is not an essential job function. This will build on the executive orders Governor Inslee signed banning unnecessary driver license requirements for state government jobs as part of a package to increase employment opportunities for people with disabilities and others who have been excluded by systemic barriers. Thirty percent of Washington residents do not have a driver license. People with disabilities are four times more likely to not drive a car, two to three times more likely to live in a zero-vehicle household, and a third less likely to be employed. People without driver licenses, regardless of disability status, are more likely to be black, indigenous and people of color. Yet a driver license requirement is often the default in job descriptions or used as a “just in case” qualification on the chance an employee is asked to perform a task outside of their job duties. As we know from our own experiences, unnecessary driver license requirements reject qualified disabled and BIPOC candidates while dissuading others from applying altogether. |