by Jake Goldstein-Street, Washington State Standard
September 15, 2025
When G. Helen Whitener arrived in this country at age 16 from Trinidad and Tobago, she did so in a wheelchair.
The right side of Whitener’s body had become paralyzed. She learned it was from a hereditary degenerative back condition that has followed her for the rest of her life.
But with treatment, Whitener, appointed to the Washington state Supreme Court in 2020, hid her disability for years. She felt she already dealt with enough being a Black immigrant woman who was a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
“Just adding that additional one, disability, I knew it would literally prohibit me from being all that I can be,” Whitener said in an interview Friday.
She would use a cane, but play it off as a minor injury when asked. She only opened up about her condition after joining the Pierce County Superior Court after years as a prosecutor and defense attorney.
Whitener was assigned to a courtroom with steps, and she stumbled. When she disclosed her disability, she learned only one courtroom was considered accessible.
This experience led Whitener, now 60, to help lead the Supreme Court’s Disability Justice Task Force. The task force’s work recently culminated in a more than 600-page study on conditions for people with disabilities in Washington’s legal system. The report found “widespread physical, programmatic, and cultural barriers that hindered in-person and virtual court engagement.”
Last week, the findings were presented to the Supreme Court in a daylong symposium.
Chief Justice Debra Stephens noted this was the first study of its kind in the nation.
“We strive as a judiciary to deliver equal justice, but we can’t deliver anything unless we receive,” Stephens said. “We are here to receive, to listen and learn, because achieving justice starts with better understanding, from the perspective of people who work within our systems, the barriers that they face.”
To Whitener, the symposium “meant everything to me with my ascension to this court.”
The findings
The task force grew out of conversations between Whitener and Robert Lichtenberg, who has since retired from the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts.
But as Whitener developed the task force, a long-awaited reconstructive back surgery stemming from her disability put her out of work for months in 2023. Whitener only took up driving again this year. And she now has fitted chairs she can use at the Temple of Justice that allow her to sit for long periods despite her disability.
The task force’s work moves beyond courts complying with federal requirements in the Americans with Disabilities Act. Instead, Whitener said, it’s about “accepting people with disabilities, meeting them where they are at instead of having them to tell us what they need.”
In the study, conducted by KMG Consulting, court employees reported a lack of accessibility training. Court users with disabilities reported wide dissatisfaction for reasons that go beyond physical accessibility. This includes inaccessible paperwork, technological issues and poor treatment from court staff.
Court staff and administrators also don’t understand their requirements under the state court system’s General Rule 33, which governs access for people with disabilities. And people with disabilities largely don’t know how to request accommodations under the rule.
Buildings and evacuation routes are often unsafe for people with disabilities, the study found. One example that stuck out to Whitener was a courthouse where an emergency exit is a fire escape with an air conditioner in front of it.
Recommendations from the Florida-based consulting group include recurring implicit bias training for judges, a consistent request process for accommodations and a pilot program to provide navigators in courts to help people with disabilities.
Whitener’s co-chair on the task force, King County Superior Court Judge David Whedbee, is a paraplegic after a rock climbing accident.
“Disability justice must remain a permanent part of how we define access, equity and justice moving forward,” Whedbee said in the symposium. “This work is not finished, it is only just beginning and it will take all of us.”
Whitener wants a commission focused on this issue, similar to minority and justice and language access commissions. She also plans on proposing changes to General Rule 33.
The goal for Whitener is to build a legal system where future generations don’t have to hide.
“It’s not about special treatment,” she said. “It is about being able to be your authentic self.”
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