Washington Supreme Court hears argument over whether "job applicant" includes anyone who clicks "apply"

The Washington Supreme Court heard oral argument in Branson v. Washington Fine Wines and Spirits, LLC on whether the state's amended pay-transparency law allows a private suit by any person who submits an application to a posted job or only by a bona fide job seeker.

Sydney Tribe, representing appellants Lisa Branson and Sherry Burke, told the court the statute's plain language uses the term "job applicant" without qualification and that the legislature could have included words such as "bona fide" or "qualified" if it intended to limit the protected class. "The point of this law is wage transparency," Tribe said, urging the court to confirm that a person who submits an application to a job posting is a job applicant entitled to the statute's private remedies.

Justices tested the practical consequences of that plain-language reading with hypotheticals. One justice asked whether a…