Legal Reform Clears the Way to Protection

The last thing a person seeking a court-issued Protection Order (PO) wants to deal with is a morass of confusing paperwork. Yet, before July of this year, that is exactly what they would get. The Washington State legal system had five distinct kinds of protection orders depending on the type of harm and relationship to the abuser. There were different orders for domestic violence, harassment, sexual assault, stalking, and vulnerable adults being abused or neglected.

Even if a person faced multiple threats, they had to pick one of five possible forms to fill out. No matter how dire the situation, if they somehow filled out the wrong form, their plea for protection would be dismissed by the judge and they would be sent home to start over—often without the judge explaining what to do differently.

All that changed in July 2022, when a new law went into effect. It combined all five categories and significantly standardized the procedures, creating one petition regardless of the type of PO. Furthermore, now if a person is found not eligible for a PO under one category, such as domestic violence, but is eligible for another, such as stalking, they will get the stalking PO without needing to reapply.

This legal reform could save lives, as most people seeking a PO need immediate protection.

The Process of Change

The Northwest Justice Project (NJP) is proud to have played a role in ushering in these changes. Alongside other organizations and individuals, including the Sexual Violence Law Center and retired Judge Levinson, testimony by NJP attorneys to the state legislature helped shape the new law.

Recommendations to include coercive control in the definition of domestic violence and for using technology to make the legal process safer and easier became part of the law. After it passed, NJP lawyers helped to draft the new PO application forms, drawing on their experience working with survivors of domestic violence to make the forms as user-friendly as possible.

NJP also developed an interactive form, available through Washington Forms Online on NJP’s Washington Law Help website. It poses questions and uses the answers to complete the documents needed to apply for a Protection Order. In just the first two weeks the new form was posted, it was accessed 844 times.

Laws are not set in stone. Legislators can change laws that do not work for people. When this happens, NJP attorneys are there to make sure the changes help to bring about a more just and equitable society.