The Washington citizenry adopted a Constitutional Amendment on November 5, 1968, which authorized the legislature to create a Court of Appeals and to define its composition and jurisdiction.

Judges on the Court of Appeals, like other Washington jurists, must retire at the end of the calendar year they reach the age of 75.

It stretches from the White River (to the extent it serves at part of King county's southern boundary) in the south to the Canada–US border in the north, and from the Cascade Range in the east to the San Juan Islands in the west.

Division II sits in Tacoma and hears appeals from the counties of Clallam, Clark, Cowlitz, Grays Harbor, Jefferson, Kitsap, Lewis, Mason, Pacific, Pierce, Skamania (see note, infra.

Division III sits in Spokane and includes the three-fifths of the state's land area that lies east of the Cascade Range.

It hears appeals from Adams, Asotin, Benton, Chelan, Columbia, Douglas, Ferry, Franklin, Garfield, Grant, Kittitas, Klickitat (see note, infra.