Dear Friends,
As we continue through the holiday season, I wanted to highlight the work being done by the more than 1,800 attorneys and staff in the largest public law office in the state. Due to their hard work, my office will be returning tens of millions of dollars to Washingtonians during the holidays, much of it going to individuals most in need.
In just a few months, we improved public safety by ending the rape kit backlog, delivered more than $50 million to Washingtonians and stood up for youth mental health by taking on Meta — parent company of Instagram and Facebook — in court.
Here are some recent highlights of our work on behalf of all Washingtonians:
- We are mailing checks to 402,200 Washington households as a result of my successful antitrust lawsuits against large chicken and tuna corporations that engaged in price-fixing on these common food products. My office is in the process of mailing $40.6 million in financial restitution to every household whose income is at or below 175% of the federal poverty level. Single-person households will receive a $50 check and multi-person households will receive a $120 check. You can watch my press conference about the refunds here. Checks should all be mailed by the end of the year. If you think you qualify, but did not receive a check, you can learn how to file a claim here.
- We announced a resolution with hospital chain PeaceHealth that will refund up to $13.4 million to more than 15,000 low-income patients of its five western Washington hospitals in Bellingham, Friday Harbor, Longview, Sedro-Woolley and Vancouver. The refunds are a result of my office’s investigation into the hospital chain’s financial assistance and collection practices. The investigation found that PeaceHealth billed thousands of low-income patients who likely qualified for financial assistance without informing them of their eligibility. You can watch coverage of the story here.
- In late October, the last of more than 10,000 sexual assault kits was cleared from shelves and sent to labs for testing, effectively clearing Washington’s rape kit backlog. This was a major milestone for my office’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, with help from partners across the state. When I took office, nobody knew the size of the backlog, or even where all the untested kits were located across the state. After a decade of work, we ended the backlog, reduced testing times, passed critical reforms to support survivors and we are solving crimes. Clearing the backlog and testing the kits helped solve at least 21 sexual assault cases so far — a number that is not exhaustive and will grow over time. You can watch that announcement here.
- Also in October, I partnered with a bipartisan group of 42 attorneys general to sue Meta, the parent company of the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. The federal lawsuit asserts Meta’s top leaders knowingly targeted youth with harmful features designed to get them hooked for life in order to maximize Meta’s profits. The coalition aims to make Facebook and Instagram safer for millions of adolescent users, including hundreds of thousands of young Washingtonians. You can read more about this case here.
- My office won a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to support our efforts to work with tribes to uncover cold cases involving Indigenous people. The grant will allow us to hire two staff members and work with up to 10 tribes to identify unsolved case from 1980 or earlier. It is the largest-ever grant from this program and was double the amount we initially requested. You can read more about the grant here.
We will continue to seek justice and protect the health and safety of all the people in Washington State.
Bob Ferguson
Washington State Attorney General
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