UPDATE ON ADVOCACY

January 2026 AAUW Guide to 2026 Legislative session and how you can participate

1. Our national government is in a state of dysfunction, leaving legislation impacting women and girls to the state legislature.

2. The committee is changing the language of our mission from ‘lobby’ to advocacy, which is a better descriptor of our mission.

3. AAUW State Public Policy Committee is focusing on policy legislation to support or oppose because our state budget is running in a deficit and no new legislation requiring funding will pass. We are in the 2^nd biennial year of our 2-year cycle, with a short legislative session.

4. Go to AAUW.WA to find all the working documents for the committee. https://aauw-wa.aauw.net/ At the top of the page is a line starting ‘home’ in red; move right to ‘Public Policy’ to find all our documents.

5. The state committee decided to focus on 2 areas, AI (artificial intelligence) and women’s rights. Bills in the House are always identified by HB, bills in the Senate are always identified by SB.

6. Our priority bills currently are listed below by bill number:

   1. HB 2157 Regulating high-risk artificial intelligence system development, deployment and use.

   2. HB 2225 Concerning the regulation of artificial intelligence companion chatbots.

   3. SB 5395 Making improvements to transparency and accountability in the prior authorization determination process. (limits the use of AI to predetermine or deny authorization for medical testing ordered by physicians

   4. SB 5825 Concerning access to public postsecondary educational institutions to medication healthcare (medical abortion pills)

   5. SB 6014 Concerning pregnancy-related accommodations. Adds section to protect privacy of pregnant workers’ health information.

   6. SB 6053 / HB 2355 Establishing labor protections for domestic workers

   7. SB 5936 Concerning prevention of and remedies for human trafficking

7. Each bill can be accessed through https://leg.wa.gov/bills-meetings-and-session/bills/  This page opens to the state legislature webpages where you can find information on your legislators and on bills in session.  The tab ‘Bills, meetings, and session’ will take you to a page where you can access individual bills and where they are in the process.  The second section of this page allows you to put a bill number into a search box, and takes you to the page for that bill, where you can see where it is in committees, read the original bill and amendments, see who is sponsoring the bill, etc.  From this page you will also be able to send support or oppose this bill messages to your legislators. 

I hope every member will look at the legislature webpages, get familiar with them and weigh in for AAUW advocacy. 

 

AAUW-Strategic-Priorities_OP1

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congress has passed a bill that will go down in history not as a beautiful promise fulfilled — but as a big broken promise to America’s students, working families, and especially to women. From early learning through graduate school, this bill deals a devastating blow to educational opportunities in America. It slashes financial aid, eliminates vital student loan programs, and channels public dollars into private voucher schemes — all while doing nothing to ensure that participating schools uphold civil rights protections. Instead of expanding access, it erects new barriers that will shut out millions of students, especially women, low-income families, and communities of color. This bill makes drastic cuts to Medicaid, it threatens reproductive freedom and the health and economic security of the very people who rely on education as a path to a better future. For AAUW, this is personal. We are the nation’s largest non-institutional funder of women’s graduate education. For more than 140 years, we’ve fought to open the doors of higher education to all women — not just those who can afford it. And we know the truth: when women lose access to education, they lose access to opportunity, economic security, and equity. This bill: • Undermines educational equity by using tax breaks to fund private school voucher programs without requiring participating schools to follow Title IX, Title VI, or disability laws — creating a loophole that permits legal discrimination against students. • Shuts women out of higher education by eliminating Graduate PLUS loans and creating borrowing caps that disproportionately harm women of color, single mothers, and first-generation students. • Attacks reproductive health and health care access by essentially defunding Planned Parenthood and making sweeping changes to Medicaid that will strip coverage from millions of women — leaving them without access to birth control, cancer screenings, and maternal care. This bill does not reflect the values of fairness, inclusion, or opportunity. It is a deliberate rollback of hard-won rights, passed at the expense of women’s futures and our nation’s progress. As the bill heads to the president’s desk, AAUW calls on the administration to reckon with what this legislation truly means — and to recognize the irreversible harm it will cause to students, families, and our economy now and in years to come. AAUW and our nationwide network of members and advocates will not stop fighting until every student — regardless of gender, race, income, or zip code — has full and equal access to education, civil rights, and opportunity.