UPDATE: On June 15, 2023, the Supreme Court of Washington upheld the Washington Voting Rights Act (WVRA), protecting Washington voters from discrimination on the basis of race, color, or language minority group.

BACKGROUND

The Washington Voting Rights Act (WVRA) was enacted in 2018 to vindicate the right of Washington voters to be free from discriminatory local election systems. Building on the protections of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, the WVRA provides a remedy in state law for discriminatory race-based vote dilution by allowing voters to challenge election systems that dilute their votes and deny them equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. The WVRA also allows any political subdivision to proactively change its electoral system to remedy a potential violation. 

The plaintiffs in the underlying case are the League of United Latin American Citizens and three Latino voters who live in Franklin County and are represented by the UCLA Voting Rights Project. Plaintiffs allege that the Franklin County Commission’s at-large electoral system violates the WVRA by denying the Latino community the ability to regularly elect its candidates of choice.  An unopposed summary judgment motion was granted in the case on September 13, 2021, but was later vacated on October 11, 2021. The motion for judgment on the pleadings was filed by an Intervenor-Defendant on November 10, 2021.

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