By Simone Carter, The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.)

The parental-rights debate is heating up in Washington — as evidenced by the hundreds of people who braved gloom and rain to protest at the Capitol Campus in Olympia on Saturday.

Conservative lawmakers and concerned residents rallied around a common theme: “We do not co-parent with the government,” as stated by Rep. Travis Couture, an Allyn Republican.

The rally was sponsored by the Washington State Republican Party, the Let’s Go Washington political committee and the Family Policy Institute of Washington, a Christian political organization. Attendees are frustrated and angry that state Democratic lawmakers are working to make changes to the parental rights-focused Initiative 2081, which was passed into law last year.

The initiative spells out 15 rights for parents of students in public schools, ranging from academic and health matters to safety notification. It also specifies the right to ask for and examine teaching materials and records.

Earlier this month, Democrats passed Senate Bill 5181 out of the upper chamber, arguing that it amounts to a clean-up measure to line up Initiative 2081 with federal and state law.

Republicans don’t see it that way. They’ve accused Democrats of passing the initiative last year with plans to come back and reverse it. Couture has decried the Democrats’ move as a “slap in the face to democracy.”

On Saturday, the lawmaker urged parents to speak out against bad bills.

“We need to be vigilant,” Couture said, “because it has been a slow erosion — but a steady erosion — of parents’ rights in this state, and we need to stand up for our constitutional rights.”

Hundreds of people rallied for parental rights on the north steps of the Legislative Building in Olympia on Saturday, Feb. 15. Sponsored by the Washington State Republican Party, Family Policy Institute of Washington and Let’s Go Washington organizations, the rally was largely in response to proposed legislative bills HB 1296 and SB 5181 that have been advanced by a Democratic legislators. Steve Bloom/The Olympian

Speaking with McClatchy after the rally, Washington GOP Chairman Jim Walsh noted that the ACLU of Washington and other organizations filed a lawsuit last year to try to stop Initiative 2081 from taking effect. A judge appointed by former Gov. Jay Inslee ultimately dismissed the suit, finding that the initiative is constitutionally sound.

In the big picture, Walsh said: “We want to have parents and grandparents, siblings and uncles and aunts, feel empowered to protect the kids they love.”

Walsh, who is also a Republican state representative from Aberdeen, added that many Washingtonians are feeling a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. At the same time that Democrats are “trying to undermine parental rights to raise children,” he said, they’ve also considered bills that would reduce sentences for criminals who’ve used guns to commit crimes: “It is an absolute failure of priority in public policy,” Walsh said.

Brandi Kruse, host of the “unDivided” podcast, called out the Democratic Party over its “unrelenting attacks on democracy.” Time and again the state’s citizens have used the initiative process as a check on the party in power, she said, yet time and again that party has sought to subvert the will of the people.

Heidi St. John, a Christian podcaster and public speaker who ran for Congress in 2022, urged parents to pull their children out of the state’s public education system — likening it to a “cesspool” — and to homeschool them instead.

“Education does not belong to the government,” she said. “Education belongs to parents.”

Hundreds of supporters for parental rights gathered on the north steps of the capitol in Olympia, Wa. On February 15, 2025. Sponsored by the Washington State Republican Party (WAGOP), Family Policy Institute of Washington and Let’s Go Washington organizations the rally was largely in response to proposed legislative bills HB 1296 and SB 5181 that have been advanced by a group of Democratic legislators. Steve Bloom/The Olympian

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