In a closely watched decision on September 4, 2025, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that job applicants can sue for violations of the state’s pay transparency law without needing to prove they applied for the job in good faith or were otherwise “bona fide” applicants. In Branson v. Washington Fine Wine & Spirits, plaintiffs brought a class action against a retailer that did not disclose pay information in job postings.
With hundreds of purported class action lawsuits filed primarily by a few serial plaintiffs, many of which were stayed, parties have been waiting for the Washington State Supreme Court to opine on who is a job applicant under the Washington Equal Pay and Opportunities Act (EPOA). These lawsuits, such as the Branson lawsuit, seek statutory damages of $5,000 per job applicant.
In a class action, workers sued Washington Fine Wine & Spirits, which does business as Total Wine and More, for not including a salary or wage range in job listings. The liquor retailer argued that the statute only intended to protect bone-fide...
Claims that Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman first emerged online in 2021 and have since gone viral. “Two billion people have been exposed to this story in French and 2.5 billion in English,...