Special interest groups which financially benefit from the homeless crisis, have used Washington State’s liberal court system to prevent local authorities from removing unsafe homeless encampments. A recent state supreme court ruling not only derailed the City of Spokane’s current homeless strategy, but it is also the latest attack by the state’s liberal establishment to weaken citizen initiatives.

On April 17, the Washington State Supreme Court struck down the Spokane citizens’ initiative (Proposition 1 which passed with 75% of the vote in 2023) which restricted where homeless encampments could be constructed (not within 1,000 feet of a school, daycare, or park – this covers about 2/3 of the city).

The measures’ overwhelming ballot success was due to the public outrage over the Inslee Administration allowing a large violent homeless encampment to be constructed on state Department of Transportation property (misnamed “Camp Hope”) near I-90 in Downtown Spokane. This 500+ person encampment drained public resources and the police labeled it as a “chronic nuisance” due to the dramatic increase in criminal activity within the fenced off area and in the nearby neighborhood.

Even before the measure was passed by Spokane voters, Jewels Helping Hands, the controversial organization which profits from the on-going homeless crisis, filed lawsuits attempting to keep the initiative off the ballot. Every local court ruled against Jewels stating the measure was legal and could be voted on by the citizens in the November general election.

After voters strongly supported the initiative, Jewels filed another lawsuit to stop the law from being enforced. City of Spokane officials were also concerned that the federal decision in Boise v Martin case (which ruled that governments can’t enforce camping bans unless they can provide shelter to those impacted) might prevent them from enforcing the initiative. Yet when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Boise ruling in its Grants Pass v Johnson decision, Spokane officials believed they were free to start enforcing the initiative’s restriction.

With the SCOTUS decision determining that local governments do have the authority to establish and enforce encampment bans, Jewels’ attorneys chose a new strategy to stop the initiative from being enforced. They argued that the initiative violated state law which restricts local initiatives to new policies and can’t be used to amend an ongoing policy.

Supporters of the initiative responded that Proposition 1 did create a new policy because it is a new public safety strategy to protect kids. Again, all lower court rulings sided with initiative supporters and ruled that the city could enforce the ban.

Yet six members of Washington’s very liberal supreme court agreed with Jewels’ creative interpretation of initiative restrictions and surprisingly struck down Spokane citizens’ initiative.

After the state court’s ruling, there were calls to have the Spokane City Council immediately codify the initiative and make it city law.  Yet it was because the liberal city council failed to impose restrictions on encampments four years ago that forced citizens to use the initiative process.  There is very little hope that progressive councilmembers will support these common-sense restrictions, even though they are overwhelmingly supported by the city’s residents.

Besides crippling Spokane’s homelessness strategy, the Washington State Supreme Court’s ruling could have a disastrous impact on citizens’ ability to pass local initiatives.

It is very obvious from their recent actions that Democrats wish to eliminate or severely limit the citizens from the lawmaking process. Progressives and their wealthy financial backers ran expensive campaigns to defeat citizens’ initiatives on the 2024 ballot, sought to pass new laws to eliminate initiatives which passed, and during nearly every legislative session Democrats put forth bills to restrict the initiative process.

The ruling by the Washington State Supreme court is yet another attack by partisan liberals on citizen involvement in the law-making process. The new definition adopted by court could severely restrict what local issues future citizens can run initiative campaigns on.

Initiative attorney Mark Lamb expressed his views on what the court’s ruling will have on citizen involvement.  “What they’re really saying is that if a city takes a policy position and stakes it out with any kind of enforcement or administrative mechanism, the voters can’t do anything about that,” Lamb explained. “That is antithetical to everything that we understand about our state constitution. It’s everything that we understand about being a state where we want to have the people involved.’

The more power Democrats and their wealthy contributors obtain, the more dependent they are in preserving and expanding this power. They are becoming increasingly concerned that the voters are seeking to impose much-needed corrections on their misguided failed bureaucracy-building policies.

There are many Washington state partisan politicians constantly blasting out press releases warning of their perceived “threat to democracy’ from the federal government. Yet these same politicians are silent about their anti-initiative efforts which are eroding citizens’ ability to participate in the democratic process here in the state. If they want others to listen to their concerns about anti-democratic behavior, then they would be wise to stop supporting efforts to reduce citizens’ voices in the democratic process.