What you see is what you get with Ahearne, who used his favored means of transport—his Ford-250—
to get to the state Supreme Court for the McCleary case.
and said, “Yes, I want to be involved.” The
rest of the board followed his lead.
Chimacum was the first school district to
join the suit, Blair remembers. “Us and Omak,”
he says. Of the nearly 300 districts in the
state, he adds, “We went to trial with about 35
school districts. When we went in front of the
[state] Supreme Court, we had 175, 180.” They
formed a nonprofit, Network for Excellence in
Washington Schools (NEWS), which includes
community and education organizations. That
was part of Ahearne’s strategy. To make it
about more than school boards.
But there was still the small matter of
proving the case. “The court system basically
says all ties go to the state,” Ahearne says.
“You have to have a really, really strong case
for the judges to say, ‘Hey, legislators, who
swore to uphold the constitution? You’re
actually violating the constitution.’ So it was
going to be tough.”
And leading the charge? A man who admits
he never would have become a lawyer if he’d
known what it takes to be one. The man
arguing in favor of greater school funding
was someone who admits, without much
prompting, that he actually hates to read.
AHEARNE LOOKS LIKE THE STRAIGHTEST
arrow in the quiver. He’s fit, square-jawed,
with a salt-and-pepper crewcut. In his
headshot on the firm website he sports an
American flag pin in his lapel.
“He’s a proud American,” says Chris Emch,
a partner at Foster Pepper who came on
board McCleary when it became apparent it
was going to trial. “It’s reflected in his truck
and his cowboy boots, and his passion for
NASCAR and motorcycle racing. He’s one of
the few attorneys who could walk across a
military base and not look out of place.”
“The thing about Tom is he’s such a real
person,” says Stephanie McCleary, who
works in the personnel department for the
Chimacum School District, has kids in the
school system, and is, of course, the McCleary
in McCleary v. State of Washington. “When he
arrived at the Supreme Court, he pulled up in
his old black truck. You’ve got all these fancy
cars at the Supreme Court and he pulls right
up in his truck. He doesn’t change who he is.
What you see is what you get.”
At the same time, as straight-arrow
as he appears, Ahearne has an amused
appreciation for the curves life throws. How,
for example, did he wind up practicing
insurance law? Well, he arrived at Foster
Pepper in October 1986 when the firm was in
the midst of representing the city of Seattle
in the Washington Public Power Supply
System bond-default case—which was the
largest municipal bond default to date. “I’m
the low man on the totem pole,” he says.
“One of my first assignments was, ‘OK, how
are we going to convince the city’s insurance
companies that they have to pay for this? So,
Tom, just go live in the library for a month
and basically write a treatise on Washington
insurance law.’ Once I did that? Any time
an insurance case came into the office, it
was, ‘Oh, those policies are so boring. But
Ahearne knows about it. Give it to him!’”
His foray into constitutional law was
equally fluky. One weekend, partner Hugh
Spitzer got a call from a municipality that
wanted to sue over Tim Eyman’s 1999 car-tab
initiative, and Spitzer walked the hallways
looking for a litigator. He found Ahearne.
