On May 20, 2025, Bob Ferguson signed House Bill 1296, effectively gutting the Parents Rights Initiative. That same day, the sponsors of the Parents Rights Initiative discussed two options they were considering to repeal House Bill 1296 and restore parents rights. The first option was to try to gather 400,000 signatures before July 3rd to put the Parents Rights Initiative on the ballot this year. Below we explain why this is nearly impossible. The second option is to file another Initiative to the legislature in which case we would have until January to gather 400,000 signatures. In this article, we will first explain why each of these are very bad options and then review two additional options. The first is to file a “Parents Rights Initiative to the People” in February 2026 to appear on the 2026 General Election ballot. The second option is to file a “Family Rights Initiative to the People” in February 2026 to appear on the 2026 General Election ballot. Either of these options would give us over five months to gather 400,000 signatures.
Why it would not be wise to file a Parents Rights Initiative this year
The reason Ferguson delayed signing House Bill 1296 for 4 weeks after it was passed by the legislature was to “run out the clock” on our ability to gather 400,000 signatures to put the repeal of HB 1296 and the restoration of the Parents Rights Initiative on the ballot this year. Sadly, his diabolical plan will work. This is because we can not even submit an Initiative to the Secretary of State until after the governor signs House Bill 1296 into law. Let’s say we submitted the Initiative on May 21st.
The Code Reviser then has 7 days to review the Initiative - meaning we would get the final version on May 28th. We could then submit the final version with the Code Revisers Certificate of Review to the Secretary of State on May 29th. The Initiative would then be sent to the Attorney General who has 5 “working days” which means 7 actual days to submit the Title and Summary placed at the beginning of the Initiative. We would get the Initiative back on Thursday June 5th.
We then can send the Initiative Petitions to our printer which would also need a couple of days to print about 30,000 petitions. We would need 2 more days to distribute the Petititions across Washington state – meaning that actual signature gathering could not begin until about Wednesday June 11th. All the petitions would need to be returned two and a half weeks later to allow enough time to collect and review them all before submission to the Secretary of State at the beginning of July. Two and a half weeks is simply not enough time to gather 400,000 signatures.
Why it would not be wise to file a Parents Rights Initiative to the legislature this year
The major difference betteween an Initiative to the People and an Initiative to the Legislature is that we would have until the beginning of January to collect 400,000 signatures to submit the Initiative to the Legislature. The reason this is not a wise option is that the legislature can simply repeat the steps they took with the previous Parents Rights Initiative – making the process of gathering 400,000 signatures a waste of time. We should be guided by the rule that “Insanity is repeating the same action over and over again and expecting a different result.”
Why it would wise to file a “Family Rights Initiative to the People” instead of a “Parents Rights Initiative to the People” in February 2026
The advantage of filing an Initiative to the People in 2026 is that we would have 5 months to gather 400,000 signatures. However, the truth is that the original Parents Rights Initiative was just a bandaid solution to a much bigger problem. Our Parents Rights Initiative was based on the Louisiana Parents Rights Act. Sadly, Washington is not Louisiana.
The main provision of our original Parents Rights Initiative was to insure that parents would be given a complete and accurate record of what is happening to their child while their child was at school.
The original Initiative did not cover other important family related issues like protecting their kids from brainwashing and indoctrination.
Nor did it protect the right of girls to their own bathrooms, locker rooms and sports leagues.
Nor did it restore the right of children and parents to be told the scientific truth about the toxicity of Trans Drugs.
Or the scientific truth that it is not possible for boys to be turned into girls or girls to be turned into boys no matter how many drugs are given to the child.
It also did not restore the right of kids with mental health problems to see a child counselor instead of being forced to take Toxic Trans Drugs.
In short, the original Parents Rights Initiative did not fully protect the parent child relationship. A more comprehensive Family Rights Initiative could and should address all of the above issues. As long as we are going to the effort of gathering 400,000 signatures, let’s pass an Initiative that actually fully restores and fully protects the parent-child relationship.
Clarifying the Washington State Single Subject Rule
Some who have read rough drafts of our Family Rights Initiative have expressed concerns that the Family Rights Initiative might not comply with the “Single Subject Rule” in the Washington State Constitution which has been used nullify some recent Initiatives. It is therefore important to better understand what the single subject rule is and what our Washington Supreme Court has said it means.
Article II, Section 19 of the Washington State Constitution prohibits bills from embracing more than one subject, and that subject must be expressed in the bill's title. This rule is known as the "single-subject" and "subject-in-title" rule: “No bill shall embrace more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title."
One example of the Single Subject rule being used to toss out an Initiative approved by the voters occurred on October 15, 2020, when the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that Initiative 976 ($30 car tabs) violated the Single Subject rule. Here is a link to their 37 page decision: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/983208.PDF
Here are quotes from this decision with the legal citations omitted:
“This court cannot interpret the initiative in such a manner that it deprives the people of acting in their legislative capacity. Legislation should be construed to preserve its constitutionality where possible… This constitutional provision (the single subject rule) is liberally construed in favor of upholding legislation… Our single subject analysis is framed differently depending on whether the ballot title is general or restrictive. The parties agree that I-976 has a general title. In such cases, all that is required is “‘rational unity between the general subject and the incidental subdivisions…. The existence of rational unity is determined by whether the matters within the body of the initiative are germane to the general title and whether they are germane to one another.”
“The ballot title must not be deceptive or misleading… the ballot title is not misleading if it says certain taxes are repealed… The ballot statement of an initiative concerns the effect of the initiative… “
“The subject-in-title rule does not require absolute clarity. Ballot titles need not be “‘an index to its contents; nor is the title expected to give the details contained in the bill.’” . A title complies with the constitution if it provides notice leading to inquiry into the body of the act. that terms are broadened in the body of the act.”
In plain English, the Washington Supreme Court divided Initiatives and legislative bills into two categories. One category is bills with specific titles requiring narrowly defined specific actions. The second category is bills with broad general titles which provide a comprehensive set of policy changes. In addition, if the content of the bill or initiative broadens or clarifies terms, the title of the bill or initiative must provide notice in the title that inquiring minds should look in the bill to learn how these terms have been broadened or clarified.
Therefore an Initiative that:
#1 has a broad title
#2 includes subjects related to that title
#3 includes a notice that it broadens and clarifies terms will comply with the single subject rule and
#4 has a title that is not deceptive or misleading
– will be upheld as complying with the single subject rule .
Some have claimed that House Bill 1296 violates the Single Subject Rule because it is 28 pages long and includes more than 25 sections:
Even though I oppose House Bill 1296, I do not think it does violate the Single Subject Rule. The first sentence of the bill explains that it is about protecting the safety of students. Even though HB 1296 actually harms students instead of protecting them, anything even remotely related to the safety of students can be put in the bill.
This includes the legislature’s new School Board Gestapo Scheme intended to punish school board members – because the legislature obviously thinks that school board members can be a threat to student safety. HB 1296 also includes a section on protecting teachers from retaliation. This may seem on the surface to be unrelated to student safety. But the legislature clearly thinks that to protect student safety, they have to protect teachers. In short, nearly anything that happens at school can be related to student safety and therefore HB 1296 complies with the single subject rule.
The Family Rights Initiative uses a similarly broad title. In fact, it uses the same framework and addresses the same topics as House Bill 1296 – but in a way that actually protects the rights of students and parents. The Family Rights Initiative clarifies and broadens the rights of all family members including the rights of students and parents.
Like House Bill 1296, the Family Rights Initiative also clarifies the rights and responsibilities of teachers and school board members – because the actions of both teachers and school board members can infringe on the rights of students and parents.
In short, nearly anything that happens at school can be related to student and parent rights and therefore the Family Rights Initiative complies with the single subject rule – as long as the full title specifies that the Initiative broadens and clarifies the rights of students, parents, teachers and school board members. Folks are then alerted that if they want to know how these rights are clarified, they should read the actual text of the Initiative.
Here is an image of some of the bills harming the rights of parents and children that our Initiative will repeal:
Here is an image of some of the rights our Initiative will restore:
We will provide more information about our plan to pass the Washington Family Rights Initiative in 2026 in the coming weeks. In the meantime, if you would like to learn more about it, please go to YouTube.com and type Washington Parents Network into the search box to reach our YouTube channel.
There you will find a 30 minute video called “How to Win the War against our Families”. Here is a direct link to this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIEQrGCrskc
Please like and share this video and subscribe to our channel to be notified about additional videos as we post them in the coming weeks.
In addition, we will be discussing our Family Rights Initiative at our next Washington Parents Network meeting this Sunday May 25th from 4 to 5 pm. If you would like the link to attend this video conference, send us an email:
Regards,
David Spring M. Ed.
Washington Parents Network