Looking for a summary of our Top Bills?
These are the bills we deem major and significant. Click the image below.
Are you looking for a summary of our Top Bills for 2026? These are bills we deem major and significant. If so, use the filter below.
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Healthcare
Creating a nondisciplinary pathway for relinquishing licenses issued by the Washington medical commission.
Bill Summary
House Bill 2652 authorizes the Washington Medical Commission to adopt rules creating a voluntary, nondisciplinary pathway for permanent relinquishment of licenses it issues (MDs, PAs, certified anesthesiologist assistants, compact licenses). A license cannot be relinquished if the holder is under investigation or facing discipline, and the new pathway cannot be used in lieu of discipline. A relinquished license is treated as a permanently surrendered property right, with no right to reinstatement or renewal, and it is not reported as an adverse action to the National Practitioner Data Bank or similar databases.
In Washington a professional license is treated as a constitutional property right. This bill clarifies a clean, voluntary way to extinguish that right when a provider truly wants to be done, instead of leaving zombie licenses out there that can be reactivated with no input from the commission. This legislation protects patient safety by ensuring this path is only available to providers who are not under investigation and not using it to dodge discipline, so genuinely dangerous or unethical clinicians still face normal enforcement. There is no appropriation, no new program, and no new enforcement mandate; it simply gives an existing commission rulemaking authority to handle end‑of‑career exits more cleanly.
HB 2652 honors aging or disabled physicians. The bill report explicitly notes it offers a graceful way for doctors who are aging, medically disabled, or otherwise unable to continue to leave practice without being treated like wrongdoers. Once a license is permanently relinquished, the commission is no longer responsible for monitoring or disciplining that person, which is a cleaner, more limited‑government arrangement.
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Crime & Public Safety
Concerning residential restrictions for conditional release to a less restrictive alternative.
Bill Summary
HB 2654 amends the sexually violent predator (SVP) less restrictive alternative (LRA) statute to add explicit residential‑proximity restrictions for conditionally released SVPs. When a court orders conditional release, it must impose limits on how close the person’s residence may be to public or private schools and other sensitive locations, and it can also keep the person from returning to their original county if that would endanger victims.
Before approving a less restrictive alternative, the court must consider victim‑safety concerns, the availability of appropriate treatment and supervision, and whether GPS and exclusion‑zone technology can adequately protect the community. If the court finds that going back to the county of commitment would put victims or the community at risk, it can require placement in another county and order exclusion zones around schools or other areas where children and victims are likely to be. The Department of Corrections and the Department of Social and Health Services must investigate and recommend specific conditions tailored to the offender’s risk factors, including residence restrictions and GPS monitoring with alerts if they enter exclusion zones.
This important legislation puts the safety of victims, children, and neighborhoods ahead of the convenience of dangerous offenders by requiring the court to actively manage where SVPs are allowed to live. It supports law enforcement with clearer statutory authority to use GPS and exclusion zones and to object to placements that they believe are unsafe, rather than leaving these decisions in a gray area. Additionally, it reinforces the message that “less restrictive” does not mean “no restrictions”: even when SVPs are outside the fence line of the Special Commitment Center, they remain under tight, court‑enforced limits designed to prevent new victims.
Bill Summary
While there are movements to limit federal funds to abortion businesses such as Planned Parenthood, House Bill 2657 supports taxpayer-funded abortion here in Washington. The bill establishes an “abortion savings program” within the Department of Health to provide grants that support access to abortions for individuals in Washington who lack sufficient resources. To fund the program, it creates an annual “coverage assessment” on certain health carriers offering plans on the state health benefit exchange, calculated per “coverage month,” with an initial assessment due March 1, 2027; that is, it is a type of “abortion mandate” against some health carriers to pay for abortions. The Department of Health must award at least 85 percent of appropriated program funds as grants, limiting administrative overhead except as needed to operate the program. Grants are intended to support abortions where federal funding is prohibited.
The bill includes strong confidentiality provisions: the department may not collect identifying information for individuals who seek or obtain support and may not disclose identifying information for staff or practitioners connected to grantees, and it exempts such identifying information from disclosure under the Public Records Act. It directs the department to develop grant standards to ensure funds are used as intended and to create the program’s administrative framework. It also makes technical amendments to the state treasury investment earnings distribution statute (RCW 43.84.092) to add the abortion savings account to the list of accounts eligible to receive proportional treasury earnings, with several sections having contingent effective dates and expirations tied to specified dates or the expiration of RCW 74.76.040. Overall, HB 2657 creates a dedicated funding stream and grant mechanism aimed at stabilizing statewide access to abortions, and it does so, ironically, by not allowing some health carriers any choice.
Bill Summary
HB 2658 requires each health carrier to submit annual, standardized data on access to and coverage of mental health, substance use disorder, and medical/surgical services by geography, provider type, facility type, youth vs adult. It directs the Insurance Commissioner to specify templates and metrics so the data are meaningful, comparable, and robust enough for independent technical evaluation and public understanding. Metrics include measures like network adequacy, time to appointment, out‑of‑network use, reimbursement levels indexed to Medicare, utilization review timelines/denials, and appeals outcomes.
This bill promotes honest markets and truth in advertising. If a plan sells mental health coverage, the public can see whether patients can actually get in‑network care, how long they wait, and what denial rates look like. The bill does not create a new entitlement; it gives regulators and employers the information to enforce parity laws already on the books and to pressure outlier plans that underpay or under‑network behavioral health. Untreated mental illness and addiction drive higher medical costs, emergency room use, and criminal justice involvement; earlier access to effective treatment reduces downstream public spending and human damage. Findings explicitly rely on independent analyses showing Washingtonians are far more likely to go out of network for behavioral health and that behavioral clinicians are paid significantly less than medical clinicians, which limits network participation.
Families with kids needing counseling, autism services, or addiction treatment often hit “ghost networks” or endless waitlists even though they pay for coverage; this bill exposes where that is happening and with which carriers. By separating youth and adult metrics, it shines a light on child and adolescent behavioral health gaps and narrow networks that hit school‑age children especially hard. Churches, small employers, and local governments that buy coverage get a clearer picture of which carriers actually deliver access, helping them steward limited dollars more wisely. HB 2658 does not dictate theology, curriculum, or clinical content; it simply asks carriers to provide data they already have in their claims and authorization systems. Privacy is protected through small‑cell suppression so individual patients are not exposed. While carriers will cite administrative burden, much of this information is already produced for federal parity compliance and internal analytics; standardizing it at the state level mainly improves comparability and accountability.
Bill Summary
House Bill 2659 prohibits the Department of Health from increasing fees above the June 30, 2025 levels for: commercial shellfish harvest licenses; shellstock shipper licenses; shucker‑packer plant licenses; export certificates; biotoxin testing; and paralytic shellfish poisoning monitoring. It bars the department from imposing any additional licensing or use fees on commercial shellfishers, shellstock shippers, or shucker‑packer plants through June 30, 2027.
License and testing fees function like taxes on doing business; capping them stops agencies from quietly raising revenue on the backs of harvesters, processors, and exporters. A two‑year freeze lets shellfish businesses budget, sign contracts, and invest in gear or facilities without fear that Olympia will suddenly jack up core regulatory costs. Washington’s commercial shellfish industry supports rural and coastal jobs in harvesting, processing, shipping, and related services. Holding the line on fees helps keep these operations competitive with other states and countries that court the same markets.
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Judicial
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Parental Rights
Authorizing the court to order certain conditions during child welfare shelter care hearings.
Bill Summary
HB 2660 applies to dependency cases when the state has taken a child into shelter care. It is described as improving court oversight and allowing judges to order additional conditions when there are critical incidents, maltreatment‑related fatalities or near‑fatalities, and similar high‑risk situations, particularly for very young children. The bill is a Democratic bill and was drafted from a child welfare‑system perspective rather than from a parental‑rights or limited‑government perspective. The bill expands what a judge can order at the earliest, most chaotic stage of a case (shelter care), when the facts are still disputed and parents often have not had a real chance to marshal evidence or counsel, increasing the risk that fit parents get swept up with truly abusive ones. Vague authority to order “certain conditions” gives judges and agencies more room to push intrusive requirements (services, supervision, restrictions on contact, conditions in the home) that may reflect secular progressive views on parenting rather than clear proof of imminent harm. For Christian families, this can make it easier for the state to impose conditions that indirectly pressure you to change how you discipline, educate, or spiritually raise your children in order to satisfy a social‑worker’s standards, rather than applying a high bar for removing or restricting children only when there is concrete evidence of abuse or neglect.
Shelter‑care hearings are emergency proceedings where the state has already taken physical custody, and HB 2660 adds yet more leverage to the state’s side at that point rather than strengthening notice, evidence standards, or speedy, full hearings on the underlying allegations. Instead of tightening definitions, evidentiary thresholds, or timelines to avoid unnecessary family separation, the bill’s solution to past tragedies is simply to give courts more tools, which can translate into a wider net and heavier conditions on families that are poor, religiously conservative, or politically disfavored but not actually abusive. This reinforces a system where parents in crisis are functionally treated as presumptively unsafe until they complete state‑mandated conditions, rather than being presumed fit unless the state meets a clear, demanding burden of proof. The legislative findings focus on “critical incidents” and child fatalities, but the operative language is broad enough that new powers can be normalized in far more routine cases, not just the rare extreme tragedies cited to justify the bill.
Washington’s child‑welfare system has a long record of disproportionate intervention in certain communities, and giving courts more open‑ended authority at the shelter‑care stage risks deepening that bias instead of addressing it with clearer limits, transparency, and accountability. Once these new powers are in statute, future rulemaking and training—driven by the same bureaucracy that already leans toward removal and heavy conditions—will likely expand how aggressively they are used, with very little recourse for families short of long, expensive litigation. The state should intervene forcefully in clear cases of abuse, but should not get more discretionary power over ordinary or values‑driven parenting at the earliest stage of proceedings. We support protecting children from real harm, but HB 2660 moves the line of state intervention in the wrong direction: toward greater government control over family life instead of targeted action against clearly demonstrated abuse.
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Crime & Public Safety
Requiring owners of properties used as less restrictive alternatives for sexually violent predators to make certain disclosures.
Bill Summary
HB 2665 requires anyone buying property with the intent to use it as a less restrictive alternative (LRA) for sexually violent predators (SVPs) must give written notice to the county sheriff, the local legislative authority (city or county), and the prosecutor where the property is located. The notice must state when they plan to start using the property for SVPs, the maximum number of SVPs who may live there at one time, and the names of any SVPs they already expect to place at that address.
The bill assures local law enforcement and elected officials get advance notice before a house becomes an SVP facility, giving them a chance to prepare, push back, or seek stronger conditions in court. Sheriffs and prosecutors can use the information to assess risks, coordinate with DOC and DSHS, and ensure any SVP placement orders take neighborhood safety, victim proximity, and local concerns into account. If property owners ignore the disclosure rules, they face a civil infraction, creating a direct consequence for trying to hide SVP placements from the community.
In review, HB 2665 reinforces community and victim protection over the convenience of SVP facility operators by demanding honesty and early notice when they want to move predators into a neighborhood. It backs law enforcement and local governments with timely information instead of letting decisions be driven solely by state‑level agencies or private operators far from neighborhood realities. Lastly, it promotes accountability without creating a large new bureaucracy—just a clear, enforceable disclosure requirement tied to property rights and public safety.
Bill Summary
House Bill 2671 amends RCW 28B.92.030 to revise definitions and, more significantly, to restructure how maximum awards under the Washington College Grant are calculated for certain categories of institutions beginning in the 2026-27 academic year. While it retains current award levels through 2025-26, the bill shifts several private institution awards from fixed statutory dollar amounts to formulas tied to a percentage of public research institution averages, creating uncertainty and potential volatility in future grant levels.
For example, private four-year nonprofit institutions would receive awards set at 50 percent of the average public research award rather than a predictable dollar figure, and apprenticeship programs would see their maximum grant reduced to 50 percent of the two-year public institution award starting in 2026-27. This represents a substantial policy change for apprenticeships, cutting their award eligibility in half compared to parity with community and technical colleges under prior law. The bill also lowers the statutory baseline for Western Governors University-Washington to $4,150 beginning in 2026-27, locking in a reduced amount subject only to the tuition growth factor.
Although the measure continues to define the tuition growth factor as the 14-year average growth rate of median hourly wages as determined by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, tying awards to wage growth does not guarantee alignment with rapidly rising tuition and program costs. By moving from clear, legislatively set amounts to percentage-based formulas, the bill reduces transparency and makes long-term planning more difficult for students and institutions alike. Apprentices and students at alternative or nonprofit institutions could face comparatively diminished support, even as workforce shortages persist in trades and high-demand sectors. Rather than strengthening financial aid access, the bill risks creating inequities among sectors and shrinking support for career-connected pathways that are critical to Washington’s economy.
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Jobs & Business
Establishing guidelines for what constitutes a socially disadvantaged individual for the purpose of business enterprise state certification.
Bill Summary
HB 2684 affirms that the state’s Office of Minority and Women’s Business Enterprises remains the sole authority to certify minority, women, and socially and economically disadvantaged business enterprises for public‑sector programs. The bill creates a rebuttable presumption that certain groups are socially disadvantaged for state certification: women; people who are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, or Middle Eastern/North African, LGBTQ individuals and “any other group” the office later designates by rule.
The bill assumes social disadvantage solely from membership in listed identity groups, inverting the usual conservative preference for race‑neutral, gender‑neutral, and orientation‑neutral policy that looks at each person’s actual situation. By letting the office add “any other group” via rule-making, HB 2684 delegates major decisions to an unelected bureaucracy, inviting continual expansion of favored categories without direct legislative accountability. Because these certifications affect who qualifies for targeted contracting and business‑support programs, locking a broad identity list into statute deepens government’s role in picking winners and losers in the marketplace based on group labels.
This particular office already has exclusive certification authority; this legislation adds a broad mandate to define and expand socially disadvantaged groups, increasing the reach and discretion of one agency instead of tightening objective, neutral criteria. Once these presumptions and open‑ended rule-making powers are in statute, rolling them back will be politically difficult, locking Washington into a more permanent identity‑based framework in public contracting. In effect, the bill hands an unelected office power to invent new socially disadvantaged groups by rule, expanding government favoritism without direct voter oversight. We should pursue race‑neutral and gender‑neutral opportunity—simpler rules, lower barriers, and open competition for all businesses—rather than ever‑growing lists of preferred categories.
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Crime & Public Safety
Prohibiting a less restrictive alternative placement from abutting a residence with a minor in the household.
Bill Summary
House Bill 2687 strengthens community safety by tightening the rules for less restrictive alternative placements of individuals committed under the sexually violent predator statute. It requires courts to ensure that any approved residence does not abut a home where a minor lives, closing a common-sense gap in current law. The bill reinforces minimum distance buffers from schools and child care facilities and mandates robust electronic monitoring with real-time tracking and exclusion zones. Courts must also individualize additional conditions based on risk, including supervision, treatment participation, and geographic limits, with ongoing review.
By directing the Department of Corrections to investigate proposed placements and recommend safeguards, the measure adds professional oversight before release. At the same time, the bill preserves a structured pathway to treatment and reintegration when, and only when, community protection can be assured. Fair-share principles prevent any one neighborhood or county from being disproportionately burdened by placements, promoting equity and transparency. Regular reporting and annual judicial reviews ensure swift accountability if conditions are violated or risks change. Families gain peace of mind knowing the law explicitly prioritizes the safety of children without abandoning evidence-based supervision.