Washington Judge Upholds Contested Ballot Language for Income Tax Repeal Measure

OLYMPIA, Wash. — A Thurston County judge rejected a bid to change the official ballot language describing the budget impact of a measure to repeal Washington's new income tax on high earners, in a ruling that also abruptly derailed a separate, related legal challenge.

Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese ruled Aug. 7 against Arthur West, an open-government activist who had sued Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and Attorney General Nick Brown, arguing that a mandatory one-sentence "public investment impact disclosure" attached to Initiative 645 was unconstitutional and should be struck from the ballot. Lanese rejected the challenge, finding West hadn't shown the disclosure law itself was unconstitutional and that the specific language used was appropriately neutral.

Initiative 645 would repeal the state's new 9.9% tax on individual and household wage income above $1 million annually before it takes effect, and would restore Washington's general prohibition on individual income taxes. State law requires a brief disclosure statement on the ballot whenever a measure would change state revenue; the one drafted by the attorney general's office for I-645 states the measure "would decrease funding for public K-12 education, higher education...and human services."

West's separate argument was that the statement is misleading because no tax revenue would actually be collected until 2029, based on income earned in 2028. Lanese pushed back on that framing from the bench, suggesting that if voters aren't told a tax cut requires offsetting reductions elsewhere, the disclosure would be the one that's misleading, not the other way around.

The ruling also unexpectedly overtook a second, separate lawsuit brought by Let's Go Washington, the campaign organization sponsoring the repeal measure, which had raised its own challenge to the same disclosure language and was scheduled for its own hearing the same day before a different judge. That hearing was canceled once Lanese ruled in the West case, prompting an angry public statement from Let's Go Washington founder Brian Heywood, who said his campaign's legal team never got the chance to argue its case. The organization has since taken its challenge to the Washington Supreme Court.

The case is Arthur West v. Steve Hobbs, et al., Thurston County Superior Court. Sources: https://www.thecentersquare.com/washington/article_3feedfc7-03da-4317-8158-74ad467f483b.html, https://www.tricitiesbusinessnews.com/articles/wa-judge-rejects-bid-to-ditch-description-of-income-tax-initiatives-budget-effects