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For Halloween, my 10-year-old twins dressed as a bat and a zombie knight. They’re getting older, but ghosts and goblins still scare them. Ghosts and goblins may not be real, but there are plenty of real threats to our safety and security. In the Attorney General’s Office, we work hard to stand up to these threats so that the people of Washington state don’t have to be afraid. This past month, these threats included invasions of our privacy through cyberattacks, sexual harassment, rigged corporate systems and unsolved sexual assault cases. In this issue:
Thank you for following the work of the Attorney General’s Office. |
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Sincerely,
Bob Ferguson |
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Bringing justice to sexual harassment victims in the agricultural industry Too many women in Washington state’s agricultural industry face sexual harassment and retaliation. My office is committed to protecting civil rights by combating patterns of sexual harassment. In April 2017, I filed a lawsuit in federal court against Horning Brothers, LLC, a Quincy-based agricultural company. My office asserted Horning Brothers allowed its foreman, Hermilo Cruz, to sexually harass and discriminate against female employees for several years, and retaliated against employees who rejected his advances or complained about his conduct. On Oct. 18, I stood beside seven women who experienced harassment by Horning Brothers and announced that the company will pay $525,000 in this civil rights enforcement action. This is believed to be the largest civil rights resolution for Washington state ever. The money will go to the women affected by the conduct. Horning Brothers received, and ignored, multiple notices over several years that sexual harassment was a problem at its company. This result forces a culture change at Horning Brothers by bringing justice to the women who were harassed and protecting future employees. Columbia Basin Herald The Seattle Times Yakima Herald-Republic |
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Continuing to eliminate no-poach clauses to protect workers nationwide My initiative to combat unlawful and pervasive no-poach clauses in corporate franchises nationwide continues. We announced several major advancements toward that goal in October. Seven more corporations signed legally binding agreements with my office to end no-poach practices nationwide, bringing the total count to 30. These companies are removing the provisions from franchise contracts at more than 85,000 locations, which will benefit millions of workers across the country. Anytime Fitness, Baskin Robbins, Circle K, Domino’s, Firehouse Subs, Planet Fitness and Valvoline all agreed to eliminate no-poach clauses. For the first time, corporations outside of the fast-food industry will enter into legally enforceable agreements to end no-poach practices. My office also filed a lawsuit against national restaurant chain Jersey Mike’s after it refused to do so. Jersey Mike’s is the first corporation any state attorney general has sued for using no-poach clauses. No-poach clauses are an example of a rigged system that decreases competition and illegally harms workers. My goal is straightforward — eliminate them nationwide. Like Jersey Mike’s, corporations that refuse to eliminate no-poach clauses can expect a lawsuit from my office.
Tacoma Daily Index Auburn Reporter |
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Completing our inventory of the state’s unsubmitted sexual assault kits Sexual assault survivors deserve justice. Each sexual assault kit tells a story from a survivor that must be heard. My office completed its inventory of our state’s unsubmitted sexual assault kits held by local law enforcement, finding more than 6,400 kits have not been submitted for lab testing by local law enforcement agencies. There are two types of sexual assault kit backlogs in Washington state and across the country. The first type of backlog occurs in crime lab facilities, and consists of “backlogged” sexual assault kits that have been submitted, but have not yet been tested. The second is the “unsubmitted” sexual assault kit backlog, which consists of kits that sit in a law enforcement evidence storage facility because a DNA analysis was never requested. With today’s announcement, my office took the first key step in eliminating Washington state’s unsubmitted kit backlog. The inventory is part of my office’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative project. Recognizing a major need in our state, we applied for and received a grant for $3 million from the U.S. Department of Justice to assist law enforcement with testing and investigating backlogged sexual assault kits. You can track the work of my office’s Sexual Assault Kit team here.
KUOW KOMO News Moscow-Pullman Daily News Pacific Northwest Inlander |
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Washington Supreme Court rules state’s death penalty unconstitutional On Oct. 11, the Washington Supreme Court ruled our state’s death penalty is unconstitutional because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner. In its decision, the court recognized what I’ve felt for some time: our state’s death penalty is broken. I’m not alone. In 2014, Gov. Jay Inslee imposed a moratorium on executions in the State of Washington, finding that executions in the state are “unequally applied” and “sometimes dependent on the size of the county’s budget.” The moratorium remains in place. I first proposed bipartisan legislation in 2017 to abolish the death penalty in Washington state. Others have proposed similar bills over the years, but they never came to a vote. My bill passed the state Senate during the 2018 session with a bipartisan vote, but failed to pass the state House. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, we should act quickly to remove the death penalty from state law once and for all. Next session, I will again propose legislation repealing the death penalty, replacing it with life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Legislature has evaded a vote on the death penalty for years. Now, the Supreme Court is forcing its hand. It’s time to end this unconstitutional practice once and for all.
Crosscut The Seattle Times The Columbian Washington State Wire |
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Third annual Data Breach Report shows significant increase At the end of the month, my office released our third annual Data Breach Report. The report finds that data breaches affected nearly 3.4 million Washingtonians between July 2017 and July 2018 — an increase of 700,000, or 26 percent, over the previous year, and an increase of nearly 3 million, or more than 700 percent, compared to two years ago. Our report identifies several deficiencies in our state’s data breach notification law and makes recommendations to strengthen it, including reducing the deadline to notify affected individuals of a breach to 30 days after the breach is discovered, requiring preliminary notification of a breach to my office within 10 days after the breach’s discovery and expanding the definition of personally identifiable information. I will introduce Attorney General request legislation in 2019 to make these improvements to state law. The number of Washingtonians impacted by data breaches increased for the second consecutive year. We must strengthen our law to help Washingtonians secure their sensitive information.
KIRO-7 News KING-5 News |
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I had a busy month with visits to Rotary meetings in Tacoma and Edmonds, an AARP tele-town hall in SeaTac, the Washington Library Association annual conference in Yakima and a law enforcement breakfast in Kennewick. Closer to home in Seattle, I spoke to Washingtonians at the environmental nonprofit Washington Wild, an immigration event at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, an undergraduate class at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business and Somali Community Services of Seattle. I always look forward to opportunities to spend time with people at various events throughout our state. I hope if our paths haven’t yet crossed, they will in the near future.
My Edmonds News
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Bob Ferguson
Dear Friends,
