Under Washington State canons of statutory construction, what is statutory parallelism? Here’s my point of view (NOTE: please read our DISCLAIMER before proceeding).
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THE CANON OF STATUTORY PARALLELISM
Statutory parallelism is a term that I’ve coined for the following assumption commonly held by Washington State courts:
[W]hen the legislature uses the same word in different parts of a single statutory scheme, that word has the same meaning throughout.
Certification From the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington in Zhu v. North Central ESD 171, 404 P.3d 504, 509 (Wash. 2017) (citing Champion v. Shoreline Sch. Dist. No. 412, 81 Wn.2d 672, 676, 504 P.2d 304 (1972)).
EXAMPLE: CERT. FROM U.S. DIST. CT. FOR EAST DIST. OF WA IN ZHU v. NORTH CENTRAL ESD 171
In Zhu, the WA State Supreme Court decided that the Washington Law Against Discrimination (i.e., RCW 49.60.210(1)) creates “a cause of action for job applicants who claim a prospective employer refused to hire them in retaliation for prior opposition to discrimination against a different employer[.]”
This was an issue of first impression. As part of its decision, the WA Court evaluated the Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD) definition of the term “employer.” In so doing, the Court concluded:
For purposes of WLAD, an ’employer’ is broadly defined as ‘any person acting in the interest of an employer, directly or indirectly, who employs eight or more persons, and does not include any religious or sectarian organization not organized for private profit. . . .
This definition clearly includes prospective employers, and nothing about the statutory context indicates that ‘any employer’ means something different for purposes of the antiretaliation statute than it does for the purposes of the rest of WLAD. See Champion v. Shoreline Sch. Dist. No. 412, 81 Wn.2d 672, 676, 504 P.2d 304 (1972) (we assume that when the legislature uses the same word in different parts of a single statutory scheme, that word has the same meaning throughout).
Zhu Cert., 404 P.3d at 509 (emphasis added).
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-gw