May 11, 2020
The Honorable William Barr Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Attorney General Barr,

We are a group of state legislators in Washington, representing districts that have suffered a long train of abuses
by statewide elected officials and unelected state bureaucrats who harass our people and eat out their substance.
Most recently, these abuses have revolved around our state’s response to the coronavirus/COVID-19 outbreak.
Some elected officials and many unelected bureaucrats are using the legitimate public health interest of
responding to a viral outbreak to justify actions that the people of our districts believe violate their
constitutional rights to privacy, to be secure in their homes and papers and against self-incrimination.
We need your help.
Chapters 42 and 43 of the Revised Code of Washington (RCW) give our Governor—and, by extension, state
bureaucrats who work for the executive branch—the ability to declare a State of Emergency and then to assume
certain extraordinary powers. In spirit, those sections of the RCW give the legislative branch some checks on
the extraordinary executive powers. Sadly, the letter of the relevant law is poorly drafted and somewhat vague.
So, in practice, our Governor has been operating unchecked during the declared a State of Emergency relating
to COVID-19 outbreak.
Our Governor’s unchecked actions have taken various forms, mostly as emergency “Proclamations” that have
imposed hardships on the people of Washington. He has defined certain industry sectors and workers as “nonessential” and banned them from normal activity. He’s prohibited certain merchants from opening their stores
and shops. He’s erratically restricted the people’s access to certain public parks, lands and waters. He’s cruelly
limited Washingtonians’ religious rights and is preventing them from expressing their beliefs in church and
faith-based services. Each of these actions raises constitutional questions; and we have worked diligently to
address those questions within the parameters of our state’s legal and governmental systems.

 But now, we face a situation that is more dire. It’s the reason we—and the people we represent—ask for your
help.
Recently, our Governor has issued an ill-defined “Four Phase Approach” for emerging from his various COVID
Proclamations. As part of this “approach”, he is calling upon state agencies to implement section 246.100.040 of
the Washington Administrative Code (WAC), as a means of controlling the spread of the coronavirus. In
relevant part, that section reads:
At his or her sole discretion, a local health officer may issue an emergency detention order causing a
person or group of persons to be immediately detained for purposes of isolation or quarantine in
accordance with subsection (3) of this section, or may petition the superior court ex parte for an order to
take the person or group of persons into involuntary detention for purposes of isolation or quarantine….
The Governor’s reliance on WAC 246.100.040 for establishing what he calls “control” is the reason our
constituents are concerned about losing the constitutional rights we described above—in addition to privacy,
personal security and against self-incrimination. We ask you to be aware of these potential abuses. And to stand
ready to intervene, if our Governor acts even more erratically or unlawfully in allowing those abuses actually to
take place.
In spirit, the RCW sections that grant the Washington Governor extraordinary powers during a declared
Emergency are meant to be limited in both time and circumstance. They’re meant to last a few days or a week,
until normal social order is restored. We’re currently several months into the COVID-19 Emergency and appear
to be months away from any meaningful end to it.
Our great concerns are: 1) that the COVID-19 outbreak has become—as many public health experts predicted—
a lingering, chronic phenomenon; and 2) that our Governor’s erratic use of the extraordinary powers granted by
the people will also linger, causing damage to the people’s constitutional rights and well-being far beyond the
intended scope of our state law.
Thanks for your attention to this letter. Please, have your staff at the Department of Justice get involved to help
the good people of Washington protect their foundational, constitutional rights. The rights that make this nation
great. Please call upon any of us to discuss this matter further.
Sincerely,

Rep Jim Walsh LD19

Rep Jesse Young LD26

 Rep Keith Goehner LD12

Rep Vicki Kraft LD17

Rep Bob McCaslin LD4

Rep Luanne Van Werven LD42

Rep Bill Jenkin LD16

Rep Bradley Klippert LD8

Rep Robert Sutherland LD39

Rep Jenny Graham LD6