washington business
A couple of your high-profile lawsuits — against the
Grocery Manufacturers Association over campaign
donations and Arlene’s Flowers over same-sex marriage
— involve business. Could you talk about why it was
necessary to file suit in each of those cases and whether
the business community should draw any larger
conclusions about your decision to intervene in them?
The short answer is that
we get involved when we
think someone is breaking
state law. It’s really not
more complicated than
that, and there’s really no
larger perspective to draw
from it other than my job is to enforce and defend state laws. When
I think someone is breaking our laws, my job is to enforce it. I don’t
think of that as intervening, I think of it as doing my job at a high
level. Both those cases are high-profile cases and I understand why
there are. I think it’s worth pointing out in the Arlene’s Flowers
case, which involves a small business, a local business that before
there were any press releases or press conferences, we sent a letter
to the owner Arlene’s Flowers saying, ‘We think you’re violating
our consumer protection laws. Here’s why we think you’re violating them. We ask that you, in the future, sell flowers to same-sex
couples for their weddings. And if you agree with that there are no
fines, there are no attorney fees, no apology needed. We just think
you need to follow state law.’ Now, it’s absolutely her right to contest that in court and that’s what she’s chosen to do, but I always
like to emphasize that we treat that case like any case with small
business. Invariably we write a letter to business. We don’t just go
filing lawsuits all around the state. I don’t have enough lawyers to
do that. …
Our state law against discrimination is very, very clear: You
cannot discriminate against people on the basis of religion, for
exa