OLYMPIA — Washington state Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders’ penchant for dissent is unquestionable: of the approximately 600 opinions he has authored in his five years on the state’s highest court, more than 370 of them were written in opposition to majority rulings.
As he seeks re-election to his fourth term, Sanders finds himself defending his often contrary role on the court — and some of the controversy he has been involved in both on and off of it — as he faces a competitive race against former Court of Appeals judge and Bainbridge Island attorney Charlie Wiggins.
Sanders, who was first elected to the court in 1995, doesn’t apologize for his “unique independent-minded perspective.”
“I’ll sign or write a dissent when I strongly believe the majority is wrong,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I do not go along to get along.”
Wiggins has attacked Sanders on several fronts. He points to cases where Sanders stood alone in his dissents, including a 2003 case where Sanders wrote that the act of indecent exposure alone isn’t a crime against a person, and a 2007 ruling where he recommended suspending, instead of disbarring, a lawyer who sexually molested an 11-year-old boy who had been one of his clients.
“I certainly agree judges see things differently and interpret things differently,” Wiggins said. “But the thing with Sanders is he is off in a field by himself with extreme interpretations like this and it happens over and over again.”
Sanders ruled with the majority 70 percent of the time last year, but still had the lowest rate of majority votes compared to the other eight justices, according to Mike Reitz, who tracks the votes and opinions of each justice for the Supreme Court of Washington blog.
Sanders defends all of his opinions, and said that his role is to follow “the letter of the law” when deciding a case.
“It’s the job of the judge to make sure individual rights are upheld, even when it’s not popular,” he said. “The brave judge is the one who’s going to do that in the face of opposition.”
Ballots for the November election were sent to voters this week. Because Sanders did not get more than 50 percent of the vote in the August primary, his re-election bid will be decided in the general election. Also up for re-election are Justice Jim Johnson and Chief Justice Barbara Madsen. Madsen ran unopposed in the primary and advanced alone to the November ballot. Johnson beat Tacoma attorney Stan Rumbaugh in the primary, so appears alone on the ballot as well.
Sanders, a self-described libertarian, says one of his proudest moments on the bench was when he was the lone dissenter in a 1997 8-1 ruling in which the Supreme Court upheld the state’s ban on the medical use of marijuana, rejecting a plea from a cancer-stricken lawyer, Ralph Seeley.
Sanders wrote: “I wonder how many minutes of Seeley’s agony the Legislature and/or the majority of this court would endure before seeing the light.” Medical marijuana was legalized through the voter initiative process a year later.
But he has received criticism on other stances, including his part in the 2006 ruling against same-sex marriage. He was in the majority 5-4 ruling, but instead of signing on to the majority opinion or writing his own concurrence, he signed on to an opinion authored by Justice Jim Johnson that more actively opposed same-sex marriage, citing “the unique and binary biological nature of marriage and its exclusive link with procreation and responsible child rearing.”
He has faced also criticism for some of his actions off the court that Wiggins says “raises integrity issues,” including touring Washington’s sex predator commitment center at McNeil Island while residents had appeals pending.
Sanders was given an admonishment by the state Judicial Conduct Commission in 2005 for that visit. He insists he did nothing wrong, saying, “It’s the role of the judge to go out and visit institutions around the state.”
In 2008, he stood up and yelled “tyrant!” at then-U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey at black-tie dinner in Washington, D.C., for The Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. Sanders later released a statement saying he was speaking his conscience, and he cited inadequate access to the legal system for detainees at Guantanamo Bay and the importance of the Geneva Conventions.
And last year, the state Supreme Court withdrew a public-records ruling after the losing party, King County, complained that Sanders had a conflict of interest because he didn’t disclose that the ruling affected a public-disclosure lawsuit he filed in Thurston County in 2005 against the state attorney general.
Wiggins, who has been an attorney for more than 30 years, briefly served on the state Court of Appeals in Tacoma in 1995 after being appointed to the seat, but lost the seat in an election that year. He’s also served as a substitute judge in King and Jefferson counties, handling criminal and civil cases, and helped oversee bar-disciplinary cases.
Wiggins has raised about $199,000 and secured the endorsements of many prosecuting attorneys, the state Democratic Party, and the Washington Council of Police &Sheriffs.
Sanders has raised more than $250,000 and has the support of the Building Industry Association of Washington, the state Republican and Libertarian parties, and business groups.
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