The bill creates a new public records exemption and amends existing public records law to withhold specified personal information of any individual or entity licensed or certified by the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) to provide child care. The exempt categories include names; home addresses and GPS coordinates; personal phone numbers and email addresses; dates of birth; Social Security or taxpayer ID numbers; driver’s license numbers; personal bank account or direct deposit information; emergency contact information; photographs not publicly distributed by the provider; and other personally identifying information. The exemption covers providers in family home settings, child care centers, school-age or out-of-school-time care settings, and other DCYF-licensed or -certified child care locations, while explicitly preserving disclosure of business addresses, program capacity, licensing status, inspection results, and public safety findings required by law. The bill also amends RCW 42.56.640 to define “sensitive personal information” and to address “in-home caregivers for vulnerable populations,” identifying those caregivers by cross-reference to RCW 74.39A.240 and RCW 18.88B.010 and removing a prior reference to family child care providers in RCW 41.56.030. It requires DCYF to update privacy guidance, licensing communications, and mandatory reporter training materials to reflect the new protections. This is a change to public records procedures and definitions rather than a creation of a new crime or a penalty change. The extract does not state an effective date, any deadlines for DCYF’s updates, enforcement mechanisms or procedures for handling public records requests under the new exemption, or whether there are other sections or appropriations elsewhere in the bill. Legislative status notes: prefiled 12/22/2025, read first time 01/12/2026, and referred to the State Government, Tribal Affairs & Elections Committee.

If enacted, the bill will make most personal contact and identifying details about people and entities licensed or certified by DCYF to provide child care—things like home addresses, personal phone numbers, emails, dates of birth, photos not publicly shared, Social Security or tax ID, driver’s license and bank account information—off-limits to public records requests, while leaving business addresses, program capacity, licensing status, inspection results, and public safety findings available. For providers this will likely reduce risks of doxxing, identity theft, and unwanted contact, and may make personal promotion or informal contact harder if they relied on public records for that; for people requesting records (researchers, reporters, parents) there will be less personal-level information available. DCYF will have a clear new responsibility to revise its privacy guidance, licensing communications, and mandatory reporter training to reflect these protections, which will create administrative work and likely some short-term costs for updating materials and training, though the bill text gives no deadline or effective date for those changes. The amendment also brings in definitions covering in-home caregivers for vulnerable populations and removes a prior reference to family child care providers, but the practical consequences of that deletion and how records requests will be handled in practice are not fully explained in the provided text.