Candidates clash over McCleary and Quinn rulings and the court’s reach

A central moment in the forum focused on two consequential rulings that continue to shape Washington law. Justice Stevens, who wrote the McCleary opinion in 2012, defended the court’s use of retained jurisdiction and periodic reporting to ensure the state met its "paramount duty" to fund basic education.

"We started from a base that the state had a paramount duty and the record showed they were not meeting it," Stevens said, describing retained jurisdiction as a way to track progress and avoid repeatedly refiling lawsuits.

Challengers disagreed. Kareem Merchant said he would have opposed the level of judicial supervision used in McCleary and called the approach a separation-of-powers problem; he noted the education budget grew substantially during the McCleary period, saying it rose from about $13 billion to about $26 billion and characterizing the end result as a policy success but one that nevertheless violated his separation-of-powers concerns.

The forum also probed Quinn v. Washington, a case litigants framed around whether a capital-gains levy was an excise tax. Justice Stevens said Quinn was a narrowly drawn opinion that traced legal history and party framing to identify the taxable incident, and that context helped parties understand the decision.

Merchant criticized the opinion as wrongly excluding capital gains from the definition of income, arguing that capital gain is a form of property-based income and that the opinion’s characterizations could complicate legislators’ ability to enact future tax measures.

Panelists debated the broader question of when courts should overturn precedent. Several candidates said stare decisis matters greatly and should be displaced only when prior decisions are unsustainable, incorrect and demonstrably harmful.

The exchange underscored a basic fault line in the race: whether the court should take an active role in correcting social harms and supervising implementation (as McCleary supporters argue) or defer more strictly to the legislative and executive branches.