In the News

Seattle Community Court (SCC), a structured pretrial release program that aims to reduce incarceration, recently launched in an effort to rapidly resolve low-level, non-violent cases by connecting participants to community resources and providing valuable service to local communities. … Read More

Two years after a workgroup convened by the city recommended that Seattle drop its drug traffic and prostitution loitering laws, the Seattle City Council on Monday unanimously voted to strike the ordinances from the books. … Read More

Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes announced Wednesday his attorneys will review all the misdemeanor cases referred to his office involving peaceful protesters and could decide to dismiss some cases or refer others to a community-based, restorative-justice program. … Read More

Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes announced Wednesday that he intends to withdraw the city from the pending motion that is currently before U.S District Judge James Robart to end the federal consent decree. The motion will be withdrawn until the city and its accountability partners can conduct an assessment of Seattle Police Department’s response to the recent demonstrations. … Read More

On the day Gov. Jay Inslee plans to cut programs to help the poor and the middle class, a majority of the Washington Supreme Court justices refused to consider Seattle's appeal of a lower court decision that ruled the city's income tax unconstitutional. The Court doesn't give reasons for rejecting petitions, so we don't know why they did that. … Read More

The United States Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge to Seattle’s pioneering “democracy vouchers” campaign-finance program. Two Seattle property owners represented by lawyers from the libertarian-leaning Pacific Legal Foundation asked the nation’s highest court to take the case last year, after the Washington State Supreme Court upheld the program. … Read More

Among the chief concerns of critics are that the law tramples on the due-process rights of gun owners. Holmes and others argue that the process has a lot of due-process protections – hearings are held, defenses can be offered and judges make the final determination. … Read More

The Washington state Supreme Court has upheld Seattle’s first-come, first-served law for renters, believed to be the first of its kind in the country. In a unanimous written opinion published Thursday, the court rejected claims by landlords who said the groundbreaking law amounted to a regulatory taking of private property and who said it violated their due-process and free-speech rights under the state Constitution. … Read More

Saying Initiative 976 would cause “immediate and irreparable injuries to our city,” Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan announced plans Thursday to file a joint lawsuit with King County that seeks to stop the tax-cutting measure taking effect. The latest effort of longtime initiative sponsor Tim Eyman, I-976 aims to reduce car-tab taxes across the state to a flat $30 and repeal city authority to charge car-tab fees for local transportation projects. It also attempts to roll back car-tab taxes used by Sound Transit. Most of the initiative would take effect on Dec. 5. … Read More

The city of Seattle has joined in a lawsuit against the Trump administration over new rules related to naturalization application fees, arguing the rules will make it more difficult for low-income applicants to have their fees waived and will likely reduce the number of people who apply to become naturalized United States citizens. … Read More