The bill would exempt mental health patients from a special charge that automatically felonizes minor offenses against healthcare workers.
The bill would exempt mental health patients from a special charge that automatically felonizes minor offenses against healthcare workers.
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A new bill making its way through the Washington Legislature could tweak a law that outlines harsh punishments for assaults on health care workers, creating a specific carve-out for mental health patients.
For nearly 30 years, Washington has allowed prosecutors to charge people with felonies for offenses like spitting if the victim is a health care worker. The law aims to protect health care workers who face rising violence on the job with increased penalties.
But there is little evidence to support the idea that felonizing low-level assaults prevents violence against health care workers when most of the people charged with these crimes are seriously mentally ill, an investigation this summer by The Seattle Times and the Marshall Project showed. In addition, removing these people from treatment and sending them into the criminal justice system can have the effect of making them sicker.
Between 2018 through 2022, the news organizations reported that 76% of the people who were charged with felonies for assaulting health care workers in King County showed signs of serious mental illness, and many of them were considered too sick to assist in their own defense.
Several of these cases involved patients in involuntary detention, where by definition they were already considered a risk to themselves or others because of their mental illness.
House Bill 1220 would still allow anyone who assaults a health care worker to be charged with a misdemeanor or a felony depending on the level of violence but would exempt people in mental health treatment or seeking it from the special category of charge that automatically felonizes minor offenses against health care workers.
HB 1220 sponsor Rep. Darya Farivar, D-Seattle, worked on issues affecting people with serious mental illnesses at Disability Rights Washington before she came to the Legislature. In 2020, Disability Rights Washington published a report looking at how patients in behavioral health crises are arrested out of hospitals for offenses like throwing juice.
“When we’re looking at the population of folks that have serious mental illness who are moving through our systems, this isn’t really preventing them from perpetrating assaults,” Farivar said. “The goal is to make sure that everyone is ending up in a better situation.”
States like Virginia and Missouri already exempt people from being criminally charged under laws against threatening health care workers if they are receiving psychiatric care or are civilly committed.
The Washington State Hospital Association hasn’t taken a position on the bill, but the Washington State Medical Association, which represents nearly 13,000 physicians across the state, has concerns about it.
Emergency physician Dr. Ryan Keay, speaking on behalf of the Washington chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said she appreciated the spirit of the bill but said it missed the mark.
“We oppose this bill as written because a sort of across-the-board carve-out for all mental health patients doesn’t take into account that there are patients who know what they’re doing when they assault health care workers,” Keay said.
Health care workers have reported increasing violence on the job in recent years. A 2024 survey by nurses union National Nurses United found that nearly half of all respondents reported more violence in their workplaces over the previous year.
“We love our work,” Keay said. “We love the acute, unscheduled care and taking care of everyone who walks in our front doors, and we need to feel supported in the work we do every day. And that is not currently the case.”
Keay compared Washington’s existing health care worker assault law to metal detectors, in the sense that having metal detectors may not necessarily reduce violence in an emergency department but having them makes staff feel safer. The health care worker assault law can help make staff feel more supported in an environment of extreme stress.
“Violence in the health care setting is a problem,” said Kim Mosolf, disability rights attorney and author of the 2020 Disability Rights Washington report.
“What has been shown to address that is increased staffing, safety planning, all of the kinds of things that you do to plan for a safe workplace,” Mosolf said. “This solution of arrest and prosecution essentially perpetuates the problem, and that person is much more likely to then be back in your ER or in your treatment facility, potentially worse off.”
King County Prosecutor Leesa Manion, whose office’s filing guidelines say prosecutors should consider whether diversion or declining charges would be appropriate for some people experiencing mental health crises, said “these types of felony assault cases, where medical professionals are being harmed, require careful analysis and difficult decision-making.”
“It is important to consider the impact to victims, many of whom are people of color, who are sometimes disproportionately harmed in these types of cases,” Manion said in an emailed statement. “Physical assaults against nurses, doctors and hospital staff are underreported crimes.”
The people charged in these crimes are also disproportionately people of color, The Seattle Times/Marshall Project analysis found. Forty percent were described by police as Black in a county with a 7% Black population.
Lawmakers have referred the bill to the House Community Safety Committee for a hearing.
Clarification: Dr. Ryan Keay was speaking on behalf of the Washington chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which opposes House Bill 1220. The Washington State Medical Association shares these concerns, but hasn’t taken a formal position on the bill.
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