(The Center Square) – Washington state has seen a massive increase in tort claim payouts, exceeding half a billion dollars in the 2024-25 fiscal year, largely driven by claims against the Department of Children, Youth & Families.
It often takes many years for victims who were under state supervision to come forward with claims of abuse and neglect. Juries have awarded multi-million-dollar claims, with taxpayers ultimately on the hook for those payouts.
In other cases, state employees have sued their state agency employer to the tune of millions, and once again taxpayers are left with the bill.
But despite bipartisan support for legislation aimed at reforms to rein in the massive payouts already clearing the Senate, a bill to do just that has stalled in the House and is not expected to advance this session.
The legislation, Senate Bill 6239, is sponsored by Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Mercer Island, requires mandatory arbitration for certain claims, and according to opponents, would have infringed upon the constitutional right to a jury trial.
The Department of Enterprise Services’ released a tort liability report in October 2025 detailing the massive increase in claims and payouts. The report says a spike in 2023 was primarily due to then-Gov. Jay Inslee’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. DSHS and DCYF claim filing doubled in 2024.
“Look at how much the state is paying out in tort judgments and settlements. My gosh, it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars per case,” former state Attorney General Rob McKenna said. “When I left office, we thought it was a bad year when it was about $800,000, and now it’s a half a billion in a year.”
He suggested influence from trial lawyers played a role in stalling the bill.
“Trial lawyers are so powerful,” McKenna said. “So influential.”
The Center Square reached out to the Washington State Association for Justice, formerly the Washington Trial Lawyers Association, for comment on McKenna’s suggestion that their opposition helped killed the bill.
“It is frustrating to hear the finger being pointed at us in that way, because we’ve been trying to work with the Democrats to address this issue since before the session even started,” personal injury attorney Alex Dietz said on Wednesday.
He told The Center Square that WSAJ worked with Dhingra to craft the legislation, but when it was introduced, the bill looked nothing like what the organization expected.
“Basically, our efforts to work with them on that front got walked all over by the sponsors of Dhingra’s bill,” Dietz explained. “They came out with something that was wildly different than what we talked about and completely impractical and would have saved no money.”
He said the bill as initially filed “proposed taking matters of public concern, whether or not DCYF is protecting kids from child abuse, out of public courtrooms and behind closed doors. And that was unacceptable,” he said.
Survivor group advocates argued the bill, which would have required mandatory arbitration for certain claims, would limit public accountability, shield state agencies and force survivors to “tell their stories twice.”
During Tuesday’s media availability with Democratic leadership, members were asked about the fate of the tort reform bill.
“I’m going to defer to the House on that one, but I think everyone acknowledges and understands that this is a huge problem for the state that we have to address,” Dhingra said.
House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma, confirmed the bill is unlikely to advance in her chamber.
“I think our shared goals are to make sure that anybody who is a victim of childhood sexual abuse, or other kinds of misconduct, have access to justice,” she said. “But we have also seen skyrocketing tort claims, so how we find the balance there is something that will continue to work with Sen. Dhingra on, and I think that her bill has moved us along the way.”
Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon, D-West Seattle, said the biggest impact on skyrocketing payouts for claims would be to cap damages for victims.
“The Supreme Court’s already told us that that’s not constitutional in our state. We need to get alternative processes for resolving these claims in place. But the really large, bankable reductions would require doing things that are not constitutional,” he said.
Dietz told The Center Square that lawmakers are dodging the real issue, which he said is figuring out why DCYF is failing so many kids and families.
“This should not be about protecting DCYF from accountability when it drops the ball and lets kids get hurt. We have an agency that is failing to protect children, and the goal should be to stop them from letting kids get hurt and to prevent child abuse,” he said. “The real tort reform is to stop kids getting hurt. And instead of doing that this session, we went with option B, which was to prevent survivors from obtaining any redress when the state screws up.”
