This page tracks the legal and electoral status of Initiative 645 (I-645 Washington) — the measure on Washington's November 3, 2026 ballot to repeal the state's 9.9% income tax on income above the $1 million standard deduction (ESSB 6346) — and the litigation surrounding both the initiative and the underlying tax. It is updated as events occur, with each entry dated. Last updated: September 9, 2026.
Current Status (as of September 9, 2026)
Planning posture: The 9.9% tax on income above the $1 million standard deduction remains law, effective January 1, 2028, unless voters repeal it or the courts strike it down. Nothing below changes that. Initiative 645 would repeal it if voters approve it on November 3, 2026; it would not repeal the capital gains excise tax (chapter 82.87 RCW). No court has enjoined the income tax. Plan as though it arrives on schedule — treat repeal or a court win as a tail benefit, not a plan.
The measure: Initiative 645 is certified for the November 3, 2026 general election ballot (Secretary of State certification July 15, 2026). If approved, it would repeal the 9.9% income tax before its January 1, 2028 effective date and restore the general prohibition on individual income taxes, while preserving ESSB 6346's sweeteners (sales tax exemptions, the expanded small-business B&O exemption, and the Working Families Tax Credit expansion).
The ballot language litigation: On August 20, 2026, Washington Supreme Court Commissioner Michael Johnston denied Arthur West's emergency motion for a preliminary injunction in his appeal of the August 7 Lanese ruling upholding the Attorney General's public investment impact disclosure (PIID). West v. Hobbs, No. 105644-3. The order concludes: “Having reviewed the arguments presented and the circumstances of this case, and mindful of the public’s interest in finality with respect to the ballot, there is no compelling basis for interfering with that process in relation to the November 2026 election. The emergency motion for a preliminary injunction is denied.”
The order denied emergency relief only — it is not a ruling on the merits of West's constitutional claims. It did decide one thing squarely. The commissioner held that the superior court's order affirming the PIID is final under RCW 29A.72.028 and therefore not subject to further appellate review, reading that statute's finality clause the way Kreidler v. Eikenberry, 111 Wn.2d 828, 834, 766 P.2d 438 (1989), read the identical language in the ballot title statute. Walsh v. Hobbs, 3 Wn.3d 914, 557 P.3d 701 (2024), was distinguished as a case that did not involve RCW 29A.72.028. West's challenge to the dismissal of his declaratory judgment action survives, and the ruling expressly leaves two threshold questions open: whether that dismissal order is appealable of right under RAP 2.2 or a matter for discretionary review under RAP 2.3, and whether the case is retained in the Supreme Court or transferred to the Court of Appeals under RAP 4.2. What is settled is what voters will see. The disclosure appears on the November ballot as drafted: “This measure would decrease funding for public K-12 education, higher education (including universities and community colleges), and human services (primarily healthcare).”
September 3, 2026 — the motion to modify is denied. West moved under RAP 17.7 to modify Commissioner Johnston's August 20 ruling. On the afternoon of September 3, 2026, the clerk issued an order denying that motion. The Court was equally divided four to four, so the commissioner's ruling stands unmodified and the disclosure remains on the November 3 ballot as drafted. Justices Charles Johnson, Sheryl Gordon McCloud, G. Helen Whitener, and Theo Angelis voted to grant the motion; Chief Justice Debra Stephens and Justices Steven González, Sal Mungia, and Colleen Melody voted to deny it. Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis did not participate — a Supreme Court spokesperson said she was ill and the Court proceeded because of the time-sensitive nature of the request. The vote breakdown comes from news reporting: the Washington State Standard, sourcing the Court's spokesperson, and The Center Square, sourcing West. We have not obtained the clerk's order, and there is no published opinion.
A denial by an equally divided court decides nothing on the merits. It leaves the commissioner's ruling in place and creates no precedent. West has said the split shows that half the Court believes the disclosure statute is unconstitutional; that is his reading of an unexplained order, and a vote on emergency relief is not a vote on the constitutional question. What the order does settle is the practical point — the motion-to-modify route to the August 20 ruling is exhausted, and the ballot language is fixed for November 3.
Why the two challengers are not in the same procedural position. The 2022 PIID statute is unusually restrictive about review, and it explains the outcome here better than any account of the hearing does. Two provisions do the work. RCW 29A.72.027(4) provides that "[t]he language of the disclosure is not subject to appeal, except as provided in chapter 114, Laws of 2022" — that is, except through the one mechanism the same act created. That mechanism is RCW 29A.72.028, which permits any person dissatisfied with a disclosure to petition the Thurston County Superior Court within three days "requesting amendment of the public investment impact disclosure by the court," requires a decision within five days, and then provides: "The decision of the superior court shall be final."
Read together, the statute channels every challenge to the wording of a disclosure into a single expedited superior court proceeding and ends it there. Let's Go Washington brought exactly that kind of petition — it accepted that the state gets its sentence and asked the court to rewrite it. On the face of the statute, the sponsors have no appeal as of right, and no discretionary review either.
But "final" has never meant absolutely unreviewable. Until August 20, 2026, no Washington decision had construed RCW 29A.72.028. Commissioner Johnston's ruling in West is the first, and it reads the clause strictly: the superior court's order affirming a PIID is final and not subject to further appellate review. That reading is not the last word. A commissioner's ruling is not a published appellate opinion, carries no precedential weight, and was itself subject to a motion to modify by the justices under RAP 17.7 — a motion West made and the Court denied on September 3, 2026, by an equally divided vote. The ballot title cases therefore remain the best guide to how far “final” actually goes, and they leave a door open. In Kreidler v. Eikenberry, 111 Wn.2d 828 (1989), the court held both direct appeal and discretionary review foreclosed, but reserved that it may "in unusual circumstances, exercise our inherent power of review to determine if the trial court's decision is arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law" — a reservation reaffirmed in End Prison Industrial Complex v. King County, 192 Wn.2d 422 (2018). In In re Ballot Title for Initiative 333, 88 Wn.2d 192 (1977), the court took review by certiorari notwithstanding the clause; Kreidler later distinguished that case on the ground that it, unlike Kreidler, involved a constitutional issue. And in Parker v. Wyman, 176 Wn.2d 212 (2012), the court observed that "the legislature may not abridge the court's constitutional power to review lower court decisions by writ," and took review.
So the accurate statement is narrower than "no appeal": the sponsors have no appeal as of right and no discretionary review, but a narrow inherent-power avenue remains for a decision that is arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law. That is a hard standard — "willful and unreasoning action, without consideration and in disregard of facts or circumstances" — and it is not a do-over on the merits. Because no court has applied any of this to RCW 29A.72.028, everything in this section is a reading by analogy to the ballot title cases rather than settled law.
West's action is different in kind. He did not ask for the disclosure to be amended; he asked the court to strike down the 2022 statute as an unconstitutional intrusion on the article II, section 1 initiative power. A facial constitutional challenge to the statute is not a petition for amendment under RCW 29A.72.028, and nothing in the section purports to make the disposition of such a claim final. That is the best argument that West is positioned to seek review while the sponsors are not.
The dichotomy is not as clean as it looks, though. Contemporaneous reporting describes Judge Lanese as denying West's request to amend the disclosure or remove it from the ballot — meaning West sought RCW 29A.72.028-type relief as well, and obtained a merits ruling on the wording. To the extent the finality clause reaches wording determinations, it presumptively reaches that part of West's case too, whatever caption it was made under. His route up therefore depends on the constitutional count being severable from the wording ruling — which is precisely the question no court has answered.
The wrinkle worth watching. Judge Lanese did not confine himself to the constitutional question. After asking West whether he was also challenging the ballot statement itself, he ruled on the neutrality of the language as well. That creates a plausible split on review: the constitutional holding is arguably appealable, while the wording determination — whatever case it was made in — may be a RCW 29A.72.028 determination and therefore final. Which characterization governs was the question on which West's emergency motion appeared to turn. The August 20 order denying the motion rested on the public's interest in finality with respect to the ballot; the ruling did not address the characterization question, which remains unanswered — and would matter again if West pursues review on the ordinary track.
These are PIID challenges, not ballot title challenges. Public investment impact disclosures "are not considered part of the ballot title under this chapter and are not subject to any of the legal requirements for ballot titles" (RCW 29A.72.027(7)). The ballot title and summary are not under challenge, and the window to contest them closed months ago.
The argument no court has heard. Let's Go Washington's petition was set before Judge John Skinder later the same day, and its attorneys were prepared to argue it. After Judge Lanese ruled from the bench at the earlier hearing, that hearing did not go forward: both campaigns agreed their challenges should not be considered in light of the Lanese ruling, and Judge Skinder did not reach the merits. The sponsors' argument has never been adjudicated — though it is worth being precise that the parties assented to that outcome rather than having it imposed over objection.
That argument was narrower and more technical than the press coverage suggests, and it was grounded in the statute rather than in politics. RCW 29A.72.027(2) does not permit the Attorney General to describe the fiscal effect in general terms. Where the impact is primarily to the state general fund, the description "must list the top three categories of state services funded by the general fund in the current state budget" and may not exceed 15 words. The sponsors' position was that the disclosure misidentifies those top three categories, and that a measure repealing a tax which collects nothing until 2029 cannot be said to decrease funding in a budget running through June 30, 2027 — indeed that repeal would leave more money available, by obviating a Department of Revenue income-tax enforcement apparatus. Whatever its merits, that is a statutory-compliance argument under RCW 29A.72.027(2), and no court has ruled on it.
In fairness to the court: the Attorney General's counsel raised the sequencing problem and suggested the ruling be deferred until both matters were heard; Lanese responded that his obligation ran to the case before him. The statute's compressed decision clock leaves a trial court little room to wait. Still, the shape of the outcome is worth noting plainly. The most consequential ballot-language question Washington has faced in decades was resolved on a pro se petition, at a hearing the represented parties on both sides were not part of. That is not a criticism of the result, which may well be right. It is an observation about the record: there is no adjudicated ruling on whether the disclosure is accurate, only on whether the statute requiring it is constitutional and whether the language is neutral. Sponsor Brian Heywood has characterized the sequencing as "sort of a trap" and said the campaign is weighing ethics charges against Judge Lanese; those are the sponsor's characterizations, not findings, and the hearing is available on TVW for readers who want to form their own view.
The constitutional litigation: Petter v. State of Washington, No. 26-2-00073-20 (Klickitat County Superior Court) — the Citizen Action Defense Fund-backed challenge to ESSB 6346 itself — remains pending. Ten plaintiffs (Benjamin and Lauren Petter; Robert and Brenda Mercer; Curt Nuccitelli; Beatrice Gasper; the Ethnic Chamber of Commerce Coalition; the Yakima Klickitat Farm Association; the Building Industry Association of Washington; and the National Federation of Independent Business) sued the State, the Department of Revenue, and John Ryser as acting director. Plaintiffs are represented by Rob McKenna, Daniel Dunne, and Jackson Maynard, with Philip Talmadge appearing for the Ethnic Chamber of Commerce Coalition; the State by Peter Gonick, Noah Purcell, Charles Zalesky, Nicholas Brown, and Dan Jensen of the Attorney General's Office. A first amended complaint was filed April 27, 2026; the State answered May 15, 2026. As of September 9, 2026 the docket shows no dispositive motion, no case schedule order, and no hearing set. No ruling has issued and no injunction is in place. The January 1, 2028 effective date stands.
Planning posture: the tax remains law, effective January 1, 2028, unless voters repeal it or the courts strike it down — plan as though it arrives on schedule.
Timeline
March 30, 2026 — Governor signs ESSB 6346, enacting a 9.9% tax on income above the $1 million standard deduction effective January 1, 2028, alongside a pass-through entity election, sales tax changes, and other provisions.
April 9, 2026 — Petter v. State of Washington, No. 26-2-00073-20, is filed in Klickitat County Superior Court: a complaint for declaratory relief challenging ESSB 6346 under article VII, brought by ten plaintiffs and backed by the Citizen Action Defense Fund, with Rob McKenna and Phil Talmadge on the plaintiffs' side. Cesar Lopez-Morales is admitted pro hac vice on April 20.
April 27, 2026 — Plaintiffs file a first amended complaint for declaratory relief.
May 15, 2026 — The State answers. Nothing further appears on the Klickitat County docket as of September 9, 2026.
May 4, 2026 — In Heywood v. Hobbs, No. 105220-1, the Washington Supreme Court holds, per curiam and without a recorded vote, that ESSB 6346 falls within the art. II, § 1 exception for laws "necessary for the support of the state government" and is not subject to referendum. The order decides referendum eligibility only — not the tax's constitutionality.
July 2, 2026 — Let's Go Washington submits 511,408 signatures for the repeal initiative, against a validity threshold of roughly 308,911.
July 15, 2026 — The Secretary of State certifies the measure as Initiative 645 for the November 3, 2026 ballot (3% random sample; 80%+ validity rate).
July 23, 2026 — The Attorney General files the public investment impact disclosure on the RCW 29A.72.027 statutory deadline. The same day, the Office of Financial Management posts its fiscal impact statement: an estimated $11.4 billion state revenue reduction over state fiscal years 2027–2031; initiative effective date December 3, 2026, prospective only; no local revenue impact.
July 24–28, 2026 — Three actions challenging the PIID are filed in Thurston County Superior Court: a sponsor action by Let's Go Washington contesting the disclosure as inaccurate and prejudicial (proposing substitute language stating the measure increases available general fund resources for 2026–27), a parallel action by the No on 645 campaign also seeking changes to the wording, and a separate action by Arthur West seeking an injunction barring the PIID from ballots and challenging the constitutionality of the disclosure statute itself. The two campaign cases were consolidated with each other; West's proceeded separately.
August 7, 2026 — Judge Lanese, ruling from the bench, upholds the PIID: the challenger did not carry the burden of showing the disclosure statute unconstitutional, and the language was found appropriately neutral. Preliminary injunction denied. The sponsors' separate statutory appeal, set for hearing before Judge John Skinder the same day, does not go forward; the campaigns agree their challenges should not be considered in light of the Lanese ruling, and no merits decision is entered. In a related proceeding, Judge Anne Egeler approves edits to the initiative's explanatory statement for the online voters' guide and pamphlet.
August 10, 2026 — West appeals the Lanese ruling directly to the Washington Supreme Court, filing a notice and statement of grounds for direct review together with an emergency motion.
August 12, 2026 — Reporting reveals that the Department of Revenue quietly revised its estimates inside the OFM fiscal impact statement: first-year collections of $3.1 billion rather than $2.7 billion, roughly $8.3 billion for the 2029–31 biennium rather than $6.9 billion, and roughly 25,000 paying households rather than 21,000. The household figure does not appear in the fiscal impact statement itself. The Department attributes about 4,000 of the additional households to income growth carrying filers over a threshold that does not move. The June 2026 ERFC forecast still uses the older assumptions; the September forecast is the first that could adopt the new ones. See Washington Now Expects 25,000 Households to Pay the Income Tax, Not 21,000 for the statutory analysis of why the drift is structural.
August 13, 2026 — The Center Square reports, based on public records, that Pacifica Law Group — counsel to initiative opponents — wrote to the Attorney General's Office in March and April urging that the ballot title and summary emphasize the fiscal impact of repeal, and that SEIU 775's treasurer later forwarded a Pacifica letter directly to the AG's chief of staff, who passed it to the Solicitor General. The AGO says its longstanding policy is to accept ballot title input from anyone; former Attorney General Rob McKenna calls the contacts "obviously highly irregular." Context: there is no formal comment process on ballot titles (RCW 29A.72.060), input letters from interested parties on both sides are common, and the five-day window to challenge the title or summary (RCW 29A.72.080) closed months ago. No litigation has resulted; the ballot title and summary remain unchallenged.
August 20, 2026 — Supreme Court Commissioner Michael Johnston denies West's emergency motion for a preliminary injunction. West v. Hobbs, No. 105644-3. The ruling holds that the superior court's order affirming the PIID is final under RCW 29A.72.028 and not subject to further appellate review, applying Kreidler v. Eikenberry, 111 Wn.2d 828 (1989); it notes that no prior appellate decision has interpreted RCW 29A.72.028. On the constitutional track, relief is denied because the statute is presumed constitutional and enjoining the disclosure now would keep it off the November ballot entirely. Expressly left open: whether the dismissal order is appealable of right under RAP 2.2 or discretionary under RAP 2.3, and whether the case is retained or transferred to the Court of Appeals under RAP 4.2.
September 3, 2026 — The Washington Supreme Court denies West's RAP 17.7 motion to modify the August 20 ruling. The Court is equally divided four to four, so the ruling stands unmodified and the public investment impact disclosure remains on the November 3 ballot as drafted. Per news reporting, Johnson, McCloud, Whitener, and Angelis voted to grant; Chief Justice Stephens and González, Mungia, and Melody voted to deny; Montoya-Lewis did not participate. An order by an equally divided court decides no merits and sets no precedent. West v. Hobbs, No. 105644-3 (Thurston County Superior Court No. 26-2-04498-34).
What's Next
Ballot finalization — Earlier versions of this page stated that county election offices faced an August 21, 2026 deadline to finalize November ballots. We have not been able to source that date and have removed it; the Secretary of State's 2026 election calendar lists August 21 as the deadline to certify the August primary results, which is a different matter. Reporting indicates the operative deadline for finalizing the I-645 disclosure was August 7. With the Supreme Court's August 20 denial of emergency relief, and its September 3 denial of the motion to modify that ruling, the disclosure appears as drafted. The motion-to-modify path is exhausted; the next event that changes what voters see is the election itself.
September 2026 — Economic and Revenue Forecast Council forecast. The first opportunity for the state's official forecast to adopt the Department of Revenue's revised figures, or to decline to.
November 3, 2026 — General election. If Initiative 645 passes, it takes effect December 3, 2026, prospectively.
Any time — A ruling or injunction in Petter. A decision there may be appealed, and the constitutional question can ultimately reach the Washington Supreme Court regardless of the election outcome if the measure fails.
Open — West's declaratory judgment action attacking the constitutionality of the 2022 disclosure statute is unresolved on the merits. The September 3 order does not dispose of it. Whether it proceeds, and on what track, turns on the RAP 2.2/2.3 and RAP 4.2 questions the August 20 ruling expressly left open.
January 1, 2028 — The 9.9% income tax takes effect, absent repeal or judicial invalidation.
What Repeal Would — and Would Not — Do
If approved, Initiative 645 would expressly repeal the new income tax. It does not expressly repeal chapter 82.87 RCW, but its broader prohibition on taxes on individual income and amounts measured by income raises a separate question about the capital-gains tax. The constitutional excise classification does not by itself resolve the initiative’s statutory scope. See IP26-645 and the Capital Gains Tax.
One asymmetry deserves attention, and it turns on the exact wording of ESSB 6346's null-and-void clause. Section 1202 of the act (chapter 238, Laws of 2026) reads in full:
NULL AND VOID. If a court of final jurisdiction invalidates section 201 of this act, sections 1 through 1003 and 1201 through 1209 of this act are null and void in its entirety.
Two features matter. First, the trigger is judicial: the clause fires only if a court of final jurisdiction invalidates section 201 — the section imposing the tax. Repeal by initiative is not a court invalidating section 201, and Initiative 645's repeal list does not include section 1202. Ballot repeal therefore does not trigger the clause at all.
Second, the reach is broader than the tax and the Part X sales-tax provisions. The void list runs to sections 1 through 1003 and sections 1201 through 1209 — a range that includes section 1203, which creates the new Title 82A RCW the act builds the tax into. So a successful constitutional challenge does not simply delete the tax; it unwinds a substantial block of collateral provisions that a ballot repeal would leave standing.
What actually dies on court invalidation. The void list is worth reading against the act's structure, because the collateral damage is substantial and almost entirely consists of tax relief:
- Part IX (sections 901 through 911) — the relief package. The working families' tax credit expansion; the retail sales and use tax exemptions for grooming and hygiene products, diapers, and over-the-counter drugs; the increase in the small business B&O credit from $55 to $125 per month (and from $160 to $375 for service-rate taxpayers); and the increase in the no-return-required threshold from $125,000 to $250,000. All of it takes effect January 1, 2029. All of it is inside the void list.
- Part X (sections 1001 through 1003) — the 2029 rollback of the service taxes. These sections amend RCW 82.04.050 and 82.04.192, effective January 1, 2029, to pull information technology services, custom website development, investigation and security services, temporary staffing, live presentations, and custom software and customization back out of the retail sales tax base — undoing much of what ESSB 5814 did in 2025. Inside the void list.
- Section 1201 — the Initiative 2111 carve-out. Section 1201 amends RCW 1.90.100, the I-2111 statutory ban on personal income taxes, to except the new tax "so long as the standard deduction is at least $1,000,000 for a household" — the operative sections use the individual: §314 gives $1,000,000 per individual, shared by spouses and registered domestic partners, and the word otherwise appears only in the §1 intent findings. Inside the void list, so the ban would be restored without the exception.
- Section 1208 — the necessity declaration on which the Supreme Court relied in Heywood v. Hobbs to hold the act exempt from referendum. Also inside the void list.
And what survives makes it worse, not better. Part XI (sections 1101 through 1106) sits outside the void list, and section 1107 puts the point beyond doubt: "If any provisions of sections 1 through 911 of this act or their application to any person or circumstances is held invalid, sections 1101 through 1106 of this act or the application of their provisions to other persons or circumstances is not affected."
It would be natural to assume Part XI is a second copy of the relief. It is not. Part XI is captioned "clarifying applicability of recent changes to sales and use taxes," took effect July 1, 2026, and amends the same statutes as Part X in the opposite direction — it retains information technology services, custom website development, investigation and security, temporary staffing, advertising, and live presentations in the retail sales tax base, adding only narrow exemptions for public libraries and K-12 schools and a handful of live-presentation carve-outs. The result is that a court invalidation leaves the service taxes standing under Part XI while erasing the Part X provisions that would have repealed them in 2029.
So the asymmetry is sharper than a first reading suggests. Repeal at the ballot does not trigger section 1202 at all, and Parts IX, X, and XI all survive — the relief arrives on schedule and the service taxes come back out of the base in 2029. Invalidation in court takes the tax and the relief together, leaves the expanded sales tax on services in place, and restores the I-2111 ban without its carve-out. Two routes to the same headline; materially different law behind them.
For what the tax means if it survives, start with the Washington income tax guide, the capital gains tax guide, and the domicile change checklist.
Update Log
August 12, 2026 — Page launched. Current through the West appeal to the Washington Supreme Court.
August 13, 2026 — Added The Center Square's report on ballot title input letters to the Attorney General's Office, with statutory context on the ballot title process.
August 14, 2026 — Added filing details for the West appeal: notice and statement of grounds for direct review plus an emergency motion, filed August 10. No Supreme Court action as of this update.
August 18, 2026 — Clarified that the sponsors' statutory challenge to the disclosure was never decided on the merits, and that the August 7 ruling addressed the constitutionality of the disclosure statute and the neutrality of the language, not the sponsors' accuracy argument. No Supreme Court order as of this update.
August 18, 2026 (second update) — Added the statutory analysis of why the sponsors have no appeal from the August 7 ruling while West does, based on the text of RCW 29A.72.027(4) and RCW 29A.72.028, and identified the sponsors' unheard argument as a compliance question under RCW 29A.72.027(2).
August 18, 2026 (correction) — An earlier version of the second update stated flatly that the sponsors have no appeal. That overstated the law. Kreidler v. Eikenberry, 111 Wn.2d 828 (1989), construing the identical finality language in the ballot title statute, reserves a narrow inherent-power review for decisions that are arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law, and the Supreme Court has taken review notwithstanding the clause in other cases. No Washington decision construes RCW 29A.72.028 at all. Corrected, and the authority level is now stated. Also corrected: three PIID actions were filed rather than two; the Skinder hearing did not go forward by agreement of the campaigns rather than by unilateral cancellation; the unsourced August 21 ballot deadline has been removed; and "unanimously" has been dropped from the May 4 entry, the order being per curiam without a recorded vote.
August 18, 2026 (third update) — Corrected the null-and-void discussion. Earlier versions stated that court invalidation voids "sections 1–1003." The actual text of section 1202 voids "sections 1 through 1003 and 1201 through 1209." Section 1202 is now quoted in full, verified against the enrolled session law. Also flagged an open question about whether sections 1101 through 1106, which sit outside the void list, independently preserve some sales-tax relief.
August 19, 2026 — Part XI question resolved against the hypothesis that prompted it. Sections 1101 through 1106 do not duplicate the Part X relief; they are the provisions that keep services in the sales tax base, effective July 1, 2026, and section 1107 expressly preserves them from invalidation of sections 1 through 911. Court invalidation therefore destroys the 2029 relief while leaving the service taxes standing. The null-and-void discussion has been expanded to itemize what falls, verified against the enrolled session law.
August 21, 2026 — Added the Supreme Court’s August 20 order denying West’s emergency motion for a preliminary injunction. Status, What’s Next, timeline, and analysis sections updated; the open question of review on the ordinary track is noted.
August 23, 2026 — Obtained the text of the August 20 ruling, West v. Hobbs, No. 105644-3 (Comm'r Johnston). Status, timeline, and finality analysis updated to reflect the actual holding — that the superior court's PIID affirmance is final under RCW 29A.72.028 — and to correct the earlier statement that the order's treatment of the direct review request was unknown. It leaves the RAP 2.2/2.3 and RAP 4.2 questions open. Underlying trial court case: Thurston County Superior Court No. 26-2-04498-34.
September 4, 2026 — Added the Washington Supreme Court's September 3, 2026 order denying West's RAP 17.7 motion to modify Commissioner Johnston's August 20 ruling. The Court was equally divided four to four; the ruling stands unmodified and the disclosure remains on the ballot as drafted. Status, timeline, and What's Next updated. Corrected the statement that the August 20 ruling remained subject to a motion to modify — that motion was made and denied, and that path is now exhausted. The vote breakdown is sourced to news reporting, not to a clerk's order or a published opinion. West's declaratory judgment action on the statute's constitutionality remains open.
September 9, 2026 — Checked the constitutional-litigation entries against the Klickitat County docket. The case is captioned Petter v. State of Washington, No. 26-2-00073-20; the Citizen Action Defense Fund is not a named party. Added the parties, counsel of record, the April 27 first amended complaint, and the May 15 answer. No dispositive motion, case schedule order, or hearing appears on the docket.
This page is for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. Reporters and practitioners: this tracker is maintained by Joe Wallin, a corporate and tax attorney at Carney Badley Spellman in Seattle. For comment or background on Initiative 645, ESSB 6346, or Washington tax policy, see the press page.