The High Court Kills Newport's Court District, and Eastern Stevens County Is Told to Go It Alone
Washington's Supreme Court struck down the law that let Superior Court sit outside county seats, wiping out Newport's new judicial district and sending local litigants back down the road to Colville — unless the county itself can be split in two.
The Supreme Court of Washington on Tuesday rendered a decision holding unconstitutional the law passed at the last legislature which permitted sessions of the Superior Court to be held at other places than county seats. The case was brought up from Chehalis County, where it was proposed to hold court at Aberdeen as well as at Montesano, the county seat, and where the county commissioners decided to build a courthouse at Aberdeen in addition to the one at the county seat.
This decision of the Supreme Court knocks out the new judicial district, with headquarters at Newport, created by the county commissioners in June. Arrangements had been made for the holding of a term of court at Newport in the near future, but the case from Chehalis County came up, and Judge Carey decided to hold matters in abeyance until the court had rendered its decision.
The knocking out of the law puts an end to the hope of the people of this section that they would be able to enjoy court privileges without the necessity of making the trip to Colville and the additional expense caused thereby. Doubtless there is very little mourning over the death of the law at Colville, where the hotel men and others were much opposed to the organization of a new district.
There remains but one method for the people of this end of the county to pursue to get what they are entitled to, and that is county division. When the matter of county division was last considered the principal objection thereto was the fact that this part of the county was not sufficiently developed and did not have a sufficient assessable value to warrant it. With the completion of the Idaho & Washington Northern Railroad, the big sawmill at Ione and the cement plant at Metaline, our valuation and population will be greatly increased, and a new county can be organized that will be wealthy enough and populous enough to warrant its formation.
Eastern Stevens County has long submitted to a handicap in the transaction of business with the county seat; we are practically off the map as far as political representation is concerned, but are now big enough and strong enough to go it alone. A movement to bring the matter before the legislature in 1911 ought to be started before long, as considerable preliminary work is necessary.
“We are practically off the map as far as political representation is concerned, but are now big enough and strong enough to go it alone.”
Two years after this editorial ran, eastern Stevens County got its wish: Pend Oreille County was carved out in 1911 with Newport as the county seat. The argument in the piece — that a distant courthouse means lost days, lost wages and second-class representation — is the same one rural counties make today about the drive to the seat of government, and it is the reason Newport has a courthouse of its own at all.
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