A multigenerational Washington cattle ranching family is staring down a $267,540 government fine and $3.7 million in compliance orders for digging stockwater ponds on their own land—and the state won't let them make their case to a jury. If the Kings lose, every property owner in the country gets the message: your land isn't yours, and your constitutional rights are whatever a bureaucrat says they are.
The Washington State Department of Ecology fined Wade and Teresa King in 2023 for allegedly damaging regulated wetlands by digging ponds to water their cattle on King Ranch, which spans Grant and Douglas counties. The Kings say the areas are longstanding stockwater ponds, not wetlands. The Department of Ecology ordered them to restore the land—compliance the Kings' attorneys estimate could cost more than $3.7 million. Teresa King called the orders "unachievable" because the areas were never wetlands to begin with.
The real fight isn't about ponds. It's about who decides. When the Kings challenged the fine, the state routed them to the Pollution Control Hearings Board—an administrative panel with no jury. Wade King told Fox News Digital the board is "all under the executive branch" and that members "almost always side with the agencies." He noted that Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson, who was attorney general when the fight started, now has appointment authority over the board alongside the state Senate. The PCHB declined to comment.
The Kings tried to get out of the administrative trap. In March, they filed suit in Grant County Superior Court, arguing that funneling them to an executive-branch tribunal violates their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. A judge dismissed the case, saying they had to exhaust the administrative process first. The Kings appealed, and a Washington Court of Appeals commissioner paused the PCHB proceedings in September while the court weighs whether they're entitled to a jury.
Oliver Dunford, a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation representing the Kings, said they're prepared to petition the U.S. Supreme Court if Washington courts don't deliver. The question: whether the Seventh Amendment applies against the states and guarantees a jury trial in these cases. "If we prevail, it would have an enormous effect, certainly across the state of Washington, but hopefully across the country, and prevent these agencies from just issuing these fines and then essentially putting the burden on you to prove your innocence and take the case all the way to the Supreme Court just to get a chance at a jury trial," Dunford told Fox News Digital.
Wade King put it plainly: "Losing this fight would be an existential threat. I don't know how we would recover from that, to be honest with you."
Both outlets covered the same facts. The New York Post framed it as a warning to other ranchers; Fox News played up the potential SCOTUS ripple effect. Neither asked the obvious follow-up: how many other Americans have been ground down by this same administrative machinery without the resources to fight back.
The same government that can't secure the border or balance a budget has limitless energy for fining ranchers who water their own cattle on their own land. The Kings may get their day in court eventually. The question is how many Americans never do.
