The state's highest court just ruled that Washingtonians will get a chance to vote on Initiative 940, which would lower the legal threshold for holding cops criminally accountable for killing people in the line of duty.

The initiative has had a bumpy road since its backers collected over 350,000 signatures last year and sent it to the legislature. Lawmakers voted on the initiative and made it into law in March of this year only to have a lower court throw out the law over alleged procedural violations.

Monisha Harrell, co-chair of De-Escalate Washington which backed the measure, said the group was hoping the Supreme Court would have reversed the lower court's ruling and reinstated the legislature's law.

“We are disappointed that the Court ruled this way but all along our campaign has been ready for November. The public has asked for these changes. We look forward to talking about the issues across the State,” Harrell said in a press release.

State law currently requires prosecutors establish that a cop acted "with malice and without a good faith belief" in order to win criminal charges against a cop that kills someone. That's one of the country's most restrictive requirements for charging a cop and amounts to "de facto immunity" from prosecution, according to the De-Escalate Washington.

The initiative would lower that threshold by removing the requirement for establishing "malice" and clarifying what "good faith" actually means. The measure also requires police officers to receive additional training on how to de-escalate violent situations and how to work with people experiencing a mental health crisis.

I-940 was originally sent to the legislature last year after De-Escalate Washington collected enough signatures to run the measure as an "Initiative to the Legislature." These kinds of initiatives go straight to the state capitol instead of being voted on during an election. In March of this year, the state legislature passed I-940 along with a companion bill that modified the law slightly.

But a Thurston County Superior Court ruled in April that the legislature violated the constitution when they passed the companion bill before actually passing the original I-940 law. The lower court invalidated the law, which automatically sent the initiative back to the people to be voted on in the next general election.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court disagreed with some of the lower court's findings but ultimately arrived at the same conclusion: the legislature's actions require that the voters weigh in on the measure.

So now voters will get a chance to decide if we should make it easier to hold cops criminally accountable for killing someone.