Washington Water Jet Workers Ass'n v. Yarbrough

(dissenting) — After due deliberation, our founders renounced a significant commodity: the State’s historical power to sell the involuntary labor of prisoners on the open market. Today, we must decide whether our founders incidentally prohibited prisoners from entering into employment relationships with private entities, a labor relationship unheard of in the nineteenth century. Because we conclude that article II, section 29 of the Washington Constitution did not contemplate, let alone forbid, private employment of prisoners, we dissent.

ANALYSIS

History is critical to our analysis because we…