🚨#BreakingNews The Washington Supreme Court on Thursday struck down Initiative 2066, a 2024 ballot measure that sought to protect natural gas service and limit state and local policies pushing buildings toward electric heat pumps and other alternatives. In a 6-3 decision, the court held that I-2066 violated the single-subject rule in Article II, Section 19 of the state constitution. Chief Justice Debra L. Stephens wrote the majority opinion. Justices Steven C. González, Raquel Montoya-Lewis, G. Helen Whitener, Colleen M. Melody and Barbara A. Madsen, sitting as justice pro tempore, joined. Justice Salvador A. Mungia dissented, joined by Justices Charles W. Johnson and Sheryl Gordon McCloud. Justice Theodore J. Angelis, who is up for election, did not participate. Voters approved the measure in November 2024 by 51.7%, or 1,941,474 to 1,813,169. Sponsored by the Building Industry Association of Washington, it would have required certain utilities and local governments to provide natural gas, barred actions that “discourage” gas use, removed zero-emission goals from the state energy code, restricted the State Building Code Council, limited local air-quality agencies, and amended the 2024 Decarbonization Act for Large Combination Utilities. The court wrote that the initiative combined four subjects that lacked “rational unity”: natural gas access and supply; restrictions on local air-quality authority; statewide building- and energy-code changes; and amendments to the Decarbonization Act, including repeal of its severability clause. Those provisions had “markedly distinct purposes and regulatory effects,” Stephens wrote. Because they could not be severed without rewriting the measure, the court invalidated I-2066 in its entirety and declined to decide other constitutional claims. “I-2066 violates this single-subject rule because it includes several provisions with markedly distinct purposes and regulatory effects, embracing four distinct subjects,” the majority concluded. “It is not possible by judicial construction to sever and save any of the separate provisions.” The court added it was “impossible … to assess which of these four subjects, if any, would have received majority support had they been presented alone.” Mungia argued courts should construe initiatives to preserve them when possible and would have severed some provisions while upholding the rest. Thursday's ruling restores certainty for policies that had been in legal limbo, including State Building Code Council updates favoring all-electric construction, local air-agency rules on gas equipment, utility electrification plans under the Decarbonization Act, and Seattle’s building performance standard. Residents and businesses remain subject to existing climate, building-code and clean-air rules rather than the initiative’s statewide gas-access mandates. @BIAofWA Executive Vice President Greg Lane called the decision “a direct rejection of the clearly expressed will of Washington voters.” He said nearly 2 million people voted to keep energy choice and that the court “has now taken that choice away.” Lane said the ruling also tightens the single-subject standard for legislation passed by the Legislature. Because the Supreme Court is the final word on the state constitution, BIAW said there is no further state appeal. The group said it will keep pressing energy-choice policies in Olympia and at the federal level. Washington State Republican Party Chair @JimWalshLD19 wrote in X that the court again used the single-subject rule “as its justification for denying the people’s voice” and called that application “intellectually lazy and dishonest.” Climate Solutions, the Sierra Club and Washington Conservation Action in a joint statement called the outcome “a huge win for Washingtonians who want to secure a healthy, affordable future.” Caitlin Krenn of Washington Conservation Action said the initiative was “a deceptive attempt … to lock our state into expensive, polluting fossil fuels.” Dylan Plummer of the Sierra Club described it as “classic … logrolling.” Gregg Small of Climate Solutions said the decision supports “clearer, more honest information on how initiatives impact our lives.”