Seattle Lawyer Lonnie G. Davis Elected to the Washington State Bar Association Board of Governors

Seattle Washington, July 28, 2004 — The Washington State Bar Association (WSBA) announces that Seattle Lawyer Lonnie G. Davis has been elected to serve on its 14-member Board of Governors. Mr. Davis will represent lawyers in the 7th-Central District, which comprises approximately one-third of Seattle. He will be sworn in September 16 at the Annual Meeting of the WSBA, and will serve a three-year term.

Mr. Davis graduated from the University of California at Davis in 1970 and received his J.D. from Gonzaga University School of Law in 1973. He worked with the Legal Services office in Everett as a Volunteers In Service To America (VISTA) volunteer, staff attorney, and directing attorney before joining the faculty at the University of Puget Sound School of Law's Disabilities Law Project (DLP), which is now a part of the Washington Coalition of Citizens with disAbilities (www.wccd.org). In addition to his work at DLP, Mr. Davis will be teaching a course on disabilities law at Seattle University School of Law in the fall.

Mr. Davis is a technical advisor to the Washington State Supreme Court's Minority and Justice Commission, and an associate member of the Governor's Committee on Disability Issues and Employment. He also serves on several WSBA committees, including Civil Rights, Access to Justice (ATJ) Technology Bill of Rights, ATJ Conference Planning, and ATJ Impediments to Access to Justice. He is a past chair of the Civil Rights Committee, and has served on the Washington Young Lawyers Division Board of Trustees, as well as on the WSBA Corrections and Diversity Committees.

He has served on the Boards of Directors of the Seattle Community Services Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, United Cerebral Palsy of King County, and VSAW (an organization of artists with disabilities); and he is a former consultant to the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs. He has also served as a member and chair of the Seattle Human Rights Commission.

Most of Mr. Davis's career has been devoted to representing people with disabilities in civil rights cases, including Doe v. Boeing Co., 121 Wn.2d 8 (1993), Duvall v, Kitsap County, 260 F.3d 1124 (9th Cir., 2001), Fell v. Spokane Transit Authority, 128 Wn.2d 618 (1996), In re Grant, 109 Wn. 2d 545 (1987), J.W. v. City of Tacoma, 720 F.2d 1126 (9th Cir. 1983), Negron v. Snoqualmie Valley Hospital, 86 Wn App. 579 (1997), Reese v. Sears, 107 Wn.2d 563 (1987); and Weyer v. Twentieth Century Fox, 198 F.3d 1104 (9th Cir. 2000).

About the WSBA
The Washington State Bar Association is a private, nonprofit organization authorized by the Washington State Supreme Court to license the state's 28,400 lawyers. The WSBA both regulates lawyers under the authority of the Court and serves its members as a professional association—all without public funding.

As a regulatory agency, it administers the bar exam, provides record-keeping and licensing functions, and administers the lawyer discipline program. As a professional association, the WSBA provides continuing legal education for attorneys, in addition to numerous other educational and member-service activities.

The governance of the WSBA is vested in its 14-person Board of Governors. There are three governors from the seventh congressional district; one from each of the other eight districts; and three at-large members, one of whom represents the Young Lawyers Division. The president is David W. Savage of Pullman. The board meets every six weeks at various locations around the state, and its meetings are open to the public. Much of the work of the WSBA is carried out through its 23 standing committees, 23 sections, and a Young Lawyers Division.

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