Through our Legislative Program the Law Center drafts legislation and analyzes bills affecting women in Washington state, and provides technical assistance and model legislation on selected issues to advocates and activists around the region.

Some of our most important accomplishments:

	Girls and Young Women
	Civil Rights for Women
	Women's Equality in Employment
	Women's Rights in Family Law
	Women's Health
	Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered People
	Reproductive Freedom
	Violence Against Women

• Ensuring the passage of legislation aimed at preventing harassment in schools and requiring the development of sexual harassment guidelines.
• Supporting legislation that would allow a non-parent to seek visitation with a child with whom that person has a previously-established significant relationship.
• Working to ensure comprehensive sexuality education in public schools.
• Defeating legislation that would undermine children's rights to confidentiality in healthcare by requiring healthcare providers to notify parents when children seek help.
• Successfully lobbying to protect children's rights to adequate financial support and to ensure that custodial parents are able to make decisions about where they and their children should live.

• Co-chairing the coalition of advocates that worked to defeat efforts aimed at repealing affirmative action laws in Washington.
• Working with the broader community to successfully urge the Seattle City Council to amend an ordinance to prevent law enforcement from enforcing immigration laws against immigrant crime victims in Seattle.
• Ensuring the passage of legislation aimed at preventing harassment in schools and requiring the development of sexual harassment guidelines.

• Advocating for the rights of survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking to take leave from work to seek safety and justice.
• Working to Washington's first paid family leave legislation.
• Working to ensure the rights of pregnant woman to take leave from work for childbirth and for all parents to take leave to care for a newborn or newly adopted child.

• Supporting legislation that would allow a non-parent to seek visitation with a child with whom that person has a previously-established significant relationship.
• Successfully working for passage of Washington's Relocation Act, which ensures that primary residential parents, 86% of whom are women, may relocate with their children after divorce when it best serves the needs of the family.
• Repeatedly defeating "friendly parent" legislation, which would put mothers at risk of being labeled with the unfounded "parental alienation syndrome" for raising legitimate concerns about the other parent in custody disputes.
• Lobbying to protect child support schedules.
• Successfully lobbying to protect children's rights to adequate post-high school financial support.
• Repeatedly defeating legislation that would create a presumption that awarding joint physical and legal custody of children is in the child's best interest. Recent studies have shown that the current system, which grants judges limited discretion to order joint custody, provides better protection to children.

• Drafting and helping to pass ground-breaking legislation requiring hospital emergency rooms to provide emergency contraception to sexual assault victims.
• Defeating proposed legislation that would undermine minor women's ability to obtain safe, legal and confidential health care and health information.
• Successfully advocating for state regulations that require insurers and employers to provide contraceptive coverage for all women.
• Advocating against legislation that would give insurance companies the ability to refuse to provide reproductive health services to women.
• Leading the effort to defeat legislation that would prohibit physicians from providing specific medical procedures that might be the safest and most appropriate for some women.
• Advocating before the legislature and administrative agencies to ensure equality for women in health care and the provision of insurance benefits.
• Fighting for mental health parity and against Medicaid cuts that increase premiums for women and limit available services.

• Assisting in the successful amendment of Washington State's Law Against Discrimination to include sexual orientation.
• Helping pass Washington's first domestic partnership legislation.
• Fighting to ensure that the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered parents are included in legislation relating to "third party" visitation of children.
• Assisting in the successful passage of a King County ordinance mandating that County contractors provide domestic partner benefits to their employees if they provide benefits to married employees.
• Helping with passage of a city ordinance giving Seattle citizens a private right of action based on sexual orientation discrimination.
• Leading a Washington State coalition that drafted and successfully lobbied for a state hate crimes law that includes crimes based on sexual orientation.
• Working to ensure that sex education laws recognize the needs of LGBT youth.

• Playing a lead role in drafting and passage of Washington's Reproductive Privacy Act, codifying a woman's fundamental right to reproductive choice.
• Drafting and helping to pass ground-breaking legislation requiring hospital emergency rooms to provide emergency contraception to sexual assault victims.
• Drafting and advocating for comprehensive legislation to ensure women have access to contraceptives, without exceptions.
• Leading the effort to successfully resist legislation and citizen initiatives that would prohibit necessary later-term abortions and subject physicians to civil and criminal penalties for performing safe, medically accepted procedures.
• Advocating against legislation that would give insurance companies the ability to refuse to provide reproductive health services to women.
• Successfully changing the law to protect patients' rights to safely enter health care facilities.
• Advocating for increased treatment opportunities and against increased criminal penalties for women who use controlled substances while pregnant.
• Successfully defending Washington's Reproductive Privacy Act to prevent erosion of women's privacy rights:
  • preserving low-income women's right to family planning services;
  • ensuring funding for abortions for low income women;
  • resisting parental consent and notification laws for minor women;
  • fighting limitations on students' access to confidential counseling and to AIDS and sex education information.

• Drafting and helping to pass ground-breaking legislation requiring hospital emergency rooms to provide emergency contraception to sexual assault victims.
• Successfully amending Washington law to prohibit discrimination against victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking in rental housing and to allow survivors of these crimes to end their leases early without financial penalty.
• Drafting and helping to pass legislation ensuring employment leave for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking.
• Ensuring that women in Washington who are forced to leave their jobs because of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking may receive unemployment compensation.
• Changing Washington law to require legal recognition and enforcement of protection orders obtained in other states or in tribal courts.
• Playing an instrumental role in the 1984 passage and 1995 reconstruction of Washington's Domestic Violence Prevention Act, which ensures that victims of domestic violence may obtain civil orders for protection against abusers.
• Working to ensure that survivors have appropriate safeguards while they receive public assistance and that they are not forced off assistance prematurely.
• Successfully working for passage of legislation that would allow primary residential parents (86% of whom are women) to relocate with their children after divorce to accommodate the safety concerns and other needs of the family.
• Drafting and helping to pass legislation in Washington and Montana that provides for lengthier time deadlines in which adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse may file lawsuits against abusers.