Good morning parent leaders!
Today, February 9, is day 29 of the 2026 Regular Session, with 31 days remaining. We are almost halfway through already!
Last week, we had the first important deadline in the state legislature, and the list of bills still moving forward is becoming much clearer. The policy committee cutoff is a key deadline that determines which bills can continue through the law-making process. A bill must be heard in its assigned policy committee and get a committee “vote it out of committee” before this cutoff, or it will generally be considered “dead” for the session. These early deadlines are designed to help manage the legislature’s limited time, focus attention on priority proposals, and narrow down the hundreds of bills introduced each session into those most likely to become law.
Here is a list of bills that will NOT move forward this year: (information from the Washington State Standard)
House Bill 2611 would’ve required employers to pay overtime for hours worked in excess of 32 per week. The food, hospitality and farm industries opposed the legislation. It got a committee hearing last week, but no vote.
Senate Bill 6261 would have lowered the age Washington parents have to file a signed declaration to homeschool their child.
House Bill 2648 would’ve prohibited Washington police departments from bringing on officers who started jobs at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after Trump’s second term began. The legislation was set for a committee vote Tuesday, but the panel didn’t take action.
Senate Bill 6111 looked to require parental consent for minors under age 17 to create social media accounts. The tech industry argued this would be an unconstitutional restriction on speech. There are a few other bills on the topic that are still advancing.
House Bill 2400 would have aimed to set up safeguards for children who appear in monetized online content, like family vlogs. It would’ve allowed young adults to request deletion of videos they appeared in as children and required social media platforms to establish trust accounts for children shown in these videos, among other things.
These bills didn’t meet the deadline this year, but they can always be brought up again in future sessions.
What’s Next for the bills still progressing?
The bills that got voted out of committee before the cutoff date, will go through two more filters before the “floor” vote. Fiscal committees look at cost and funding. Rules committees decide whether a bill is ready for a full vote. Bills must pass both steps to keep moving this session. Bills that don’t affect the budget can skip the fiscal committee and go straight to rules. Public hearings in fiscal committees are about the financial impact of a bill, not how effective the policy is.
Bills that pass fiscal and rules committees are then scheduled for a floor vote, where the full House or Senate debates and votes on them before they move through the opposite chamber. This is a key moment to reach out to your legislators and share your perspective on bills.
Bills that pass in one chamber must go through the same process in the other chamber. House bills go to the Senate, and Senate bills go to the House, and it starts all over again!
