Despite signing of anti-parents’ rights bill, ‘this isn’t over,’ says Sen. Perry Dozier

Sen. Perry Dozier criticized Gov. Bob Ferguson’s signing of HB 1296, calling it a partisan move that rolls back key parental rights established by Initiative 2081. Photo courtesy Washington Senate Republicans

The law created by House Bill 1296 eliminates important rights that had been guaranteed through last year’s passage of Initiative 2081, the parents’ rights measure put in front of legislators by nearly 450,000 Washington voters

Sen. Perry Dozier is dismayed by today’s signing of legislation that immediately undermines Washington’s highly popular parental-rights law, created in 2024 after the Waitsburg Republican had tried for years to put a similar law into place.

The law created by House Bill 1296 eliminates important rights that had been guaranteed through last year’s passage of Initiative 2081, the parents’ rights measure put in front of legislators by nearly 450,000 Washington voters. With the exception of one minor section, HB 1296 became law as soon as Gov. Bob Ferguson signed it, because the bill included what lawmakers refer to as the “emergency clause.”

From 2021 through 2023, Dozier was the prime sponsor of the parental-rights legislation that preceded I-2081. He offered this reaction upon learning Ferguson had signed the partisan legislation without vetoing a single section.

“While this is a setback for the parents who want and deserve to know more about what’s happening with their children at school, let’s be clear: this isn’t over. Republicans are going to keep working to defend the rights of parents and reestablish the access to important information that was lost today when this new law took effect. At the same time, we should expect that the supporters of this bill will keep trying to get between parents and their children.

“There’s a reason the I-2081 law required that parents have access to certain information, like prior notification when non-emergency medical services are being offered to their child during school hours. Obviously, the majority Democrats also have a reason for wanting to do away with that. They haven’t been entirely transparent about why they targeted certain parental rights, but they had the votes to ram this through anyway.

“It’s revealing that the new law literally puts a new list of ‘student rights’ ahead of the rights of parents and guardians. The same goes for insisting that it contain the ‘emergency clause.’ There’s no emergency here – not with a month left in the school year. But that language also shields a law from the simplest kind of voter challenge, which is through a referendum.

“The governor said today that a ‘safe learning environment’ is a priority, which is fair – but I have to believe most parents are interested in knowing what their students are learning, not just whether the learning environment is safe. They don’t want the school district, meaning government, to interfere with their authority as parents. The prime sponsor of the bill indicated this policy is also a priority for the education community, to which she belongs, and that raises questions as well.

“Finally, consider how so many of the Democrats voted for I-2081 during last year’s session, then turned right around this year and voted for the bill to undermine it. That makes you wonder how sincere they were about supporting parental rights in the first place. With Republicans, there’s no need to wonder – we’ll keep standing with parents and students.”