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Washington state ended its fiscal year June 30 on the hook for a record-setting $614 million to cover legal fees, jury awards and settlements for its lawsuits and tort claims. As a self-insured state, the bigger those costs grow, the more they cut into budgets for services state government provides. The skyrocketing costs are unsustainable.

House lawmakers in Olympia had a chance to pass modest reforms to the state’s country-leading tort liability exposure; instead, they chose at their peril to ignore a Senate-passed bill that could have stemmed at least some of the bleeding. The House’s Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jamila Taylor, D-Federal Way, didn’t even give the bill a hearing.

The ability of Washingtonians to seek redress for government wrongdoing can and should be preserved. But it also cannot be a blank check that shortchanges state and local governments from providing services that communities around the state depend on. And that’s where the state is headed without legislative action.

Here’s how the state got here: Washington’s waiver of sovereign immunity — which allowed it to be sued for damages — is broader than any other state, according to a recent report by the Washington State Association of Counties. And since 1967, when the immunity was waived, the state’s courts have continued to make it easier to bring claims against the government.

Fast forward to this past decade, when court rulings also eliminated the statute of limitations on childhood sexual abuse cases, often involving those in the foster system. Claims have ballooned against the state Department of Children, Youth and Families — from four in 2018 to 1,110 in 2025 — with nearly three in four of cases filed in 2025 for alleged misconduct before 2010. One recent Pierce County case resulted in a jury verdict totaling $117 million.

Earlier this year, state Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, took on the admittedly tall task of reforms, guiding a bill through the state Senate that passed 33-16. Lending the credibility of being a lawyer herself, Dhingra described her legislation, which would’ve added arbitration and review processes to speed and streamline cases, as akin to drinking cod liver oil. “We have to drink it in order to have a healthy budget,” she said on the senate floor.

With no hearing in the House, Senate Democrats instead handed tort reform to a committee comprising attorneys, victims advocates and state and local government representatives.

Dhingra noted that Washington is an outlier in the country, a state whose governments have more liability exposure than any other. She expressed pride in Washingtonians’ access to justice but acknowledged changes needed to be made.

To solve this intractable problem will require nothing short of Gov. Bob Ferguson’s and Attorney General Nick Brown’s leadership. It was Ferguson, after all, who was the state’s chief lawyer before he was elected governor in 2024. Without their voices in crafting a workable solution, ballooning tort costs likely will plague state and local governments for years to come. They must realize that the higher these payouts go, the more they will threaten core services and the workforce that provides them.

Several ideas could and should be considered. For instance, at least 33 states have caps that limit amounts governments must pay out in lawsuits. While Washington state’s Supreme Court found those caps unconstitutional in a previous ruling, lawmakers could still consider a constitutional amendment to resurrect the idea; after all, the Legislature’s passage of a potentially unconstitutional income tax failed to stop ruling Democrats from taking action.

Barring that step, Dhingra’s reforms could at least form a starting point. Yet pushback by opponents, particularly the state’s trial attorneys, is preventing even small changes.

Inaction at this point is unacceptable. The Legislature can make sensible tort reforms without disenfranchising Washingtonians harmed by their state government. The time to take action is now.

“Washington’s expansive liability for purely governmental functions and decisions has produced high legal defense costs and increasing tort payouts, financed by taxpayers at the expense of other services, raising the question of whether such a system is in the public interest,” the damning Washington counties association report noted.

Washington does not have to sacrifice its leadership as a place where victims have access to justice. But a failure to amend current practices will result in harmful cuts to both state and local governments — and could lead to a vicious cycle, where underfunding contributes to increased claims of government neglect. The current trajectory is unacceptable; lawmakers have a duty to change course.

Thoughts?

Prayers of hope and comfort to anyone directly or indirectly affected by this tragedy. You will not walk alone.

A lawsuit filed Thursday challenges the constitutionality of the public investment impact statement that will appear on the November ballot alongside an initiative to repeal the state’s “millionaires tax,” opening a new legal front over the tax since it was signed into law by Gov. Bob Ferguson.

The lawsuit, filed by open government advocate Arthur West in Thurston County Superior Court, names Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and Attorney General Nick Brown as defendants.

Rather than disputing the tax itself, West’s lawsuit asks whether lawmakers can require government-written language to a citizen initiative to be added to an initiative after the petition process is complete. The case could have broader implications for how Washington’s citizen initiative process operates.

Under state law, the attorney general’s office must prepare impact statements for initiatives that would repeal or change taxes and fees in ways that could affect state revenue. Those statements are added only after signature gathering has ended and an initiative has been certified for the ballot, appearing on the ballot between the initiative description and the question presented to voters,

The attorney general’s office released the statement for the repeal income tax initiative, I-645, Thursday. It says: “This measure would decrease funding for public K-12 education, higher education (including universities and community colleges), and human services (primarily healthcare).” West argues that statement also violates the law’s own requirement that impact statement remain neutral and not prejudice the outcome of the election.

Supporters of the repeal initiative are also considering a separate legal challenge to the disclosure. Let’s Go Washington, which is running the I-645 campaign, in a news release Friday, argued the statement is inaccurate because the tax revenue has not yet been collected or allocated, making it impossible, in the group’s view, to decrease funding that does not currently exist.