As we near the end of 2023, our Legislative Action Team in Washington is already hard at work gearing up for the 2024 legislative session.
With a democrat majority in both chambers, there’s not a lot of opportunity to help push good policy, so we spend most of our time and efforts fighting to stop the democrats from passing more bad policy.
“Can it get any worse in Washington??!!”, you might wonder…
Yes, yes it can and we will be there to hold the line.
Our “highlight reel” is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to “big, bad bills” on the table in the 2024 Washington legislative session. We’re watching these and dozens more very closely and want to make sure they’re on your radar so you can speak up and fight with us to stop these radical left policies from passing next year.
HB 1333 – Ferguson’s “Domestic Violent Extremism” bill (not to be confused with domestic violence) also known as the “ministry of truth” bill. This bill targets free speech that Washington’s democrats don’t like. This was introduced this year and will be on deck again in January.
“Critics argue that it could easily lead to situations like that in 2021, the National School Boards Association, or NSBA, sent a memo to the Biden Administration asking that it treat parent protesting during public comment at local school board meetings as “a form of domestic terrorism” under the PATRIOT Act.” ‘Ministry of Truth’: Critics warn Washington extremism bill targets free speech | Washington | thecentersquare.com
SB 5427 – aka the “Tattletale Hotline”. This bill would allow private citizens to report incidents of “hate crimes” or “bias incidents” to the State Attorney General’s Office, with the possibility of receiving up to $2,000 for a noncriminal incident.
“Spend five minutes on Twitter on any given day and I assure someone would say something offensive under this law that we could call a ‘hate crime’ and collect $2,000 from the attorney general,” Conservative Ladies of Washington Founder and President Julie Barrett told the Senate Ways and Means Committee at a Feb. 20 public hearing. “It potentially target[s] people for actions they don’t like, but are not actually hate crimes. In collaboration with bills like HB 1333, this would create sort of a ‘tattletale hotline’ to report people one doesn’t agree with or doesn’t like.”
SB 5462 – “Promoting Inclusive Learning Standards in Public Schools.” This bill would require school districts to hire a coordinator to oversee and promote LGBTQ and anti-racist learning standards in schools across the state. This bill passed the Senate in 2023 but did not make it to a hearing in the House. We anticipate this will be a top priority bill for the Senate Education Committee to advance in January 2024.
“The bill includes language specific to LGBTQ+ communities, but it also references multiple other marginalized and underrepresented groups that should be included in curriculum, including Native American people, women, people from varied racial and ethnic backgrounds, from varied socioeconomic statuses, from varied religious backgrounds, immigrants and refugees, disabled people, neurodivergent people, English learners and sign language users, among others.”
HB 1178 – Repeals Washington’s preemption law, allowing a city, municipality, or county to pass their own firearms ordinances, including adopting laws that are in addition to or more restrictive than state law. HB 1178 would create a confusing patchwork of gun laws across the state that would make otherwise law-abiding gun owners criminals.
Please consider making a donation to help us engage citizens in fighting against these and other bad policies in the 2024 session.
