New year brings new laws for Washington state residents - KIMA CBS 29
OLYMPIA, Wash. — The arrival of 2022 also brings with it a raft of new laws set to take effect in Washington state, including legislation that aims to restore voting rights and ban the use of Native American images and names as school mascots.
Customers who take food orders to go will now have to ask for single-use eating utensils and condiments because a new law that starts Saturday prohibits establishments from providing them without being asked to do so.
In other instances, the new legislation was personal for its sponsors.
Native American student Ivy Pete, a student at North Central High School in Spokane, took her concerns about the misappropriation of her ancestor's customs and clothing to the state legislature.
"In the center of my high school’s office sits a glass case with two presumably Indian mascots dressed in full regalia symbolic of a defeated and extinct Indian American akin to animals in a zoo," she said. "It makes it extremely difficult to validate my own identity when I am constantly being shown images of how I should look like or how I should act.”
State Rep. Debra Lekanoff, who is also of Native American ancestry, sponsored the bill to ban the use of those mascots.
"When we see others using us in a mascot form of regalia (by) using a deer hide, using the salmon skin, using the feathers in mockery, this is not a way in which we are being honored as the first Washingtonians," she said. "As the first Americans of this great country.”
Another new law with a personal attachment to the bill’s author is the restoration of voting rights for felons who are no longer in custody.
Sponsored by state Rep. Tarra Simmons of Bremerton. the law gives people a second chance to participate in American democracy.
"This bill is very personal to me as a person who has lost my right to vote, due to a felony conviction," she said, referring to her previous incarceration of 30 months for low-level drug and theft crimes. "It is also a true honor to be here today as a state representative. An honor that is directly tied to my ability to successfully re-enter the community after incarceration and become a voter again.”
Simmons went to law school and fought the Washington state Bar Association all the way to the state supreme court to become a lawyer who now will be able to vote.
source: https://kimatv.com/news/local/new-year-brings-new-laws-for-washington-state-residents
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