Reuters: Trump administration will impact agenda of state attorneys general
Nobody really knows what the next four years will bring at the DOJ. What is certain is that State Attorneys General wield broad powers and are not shy about using them. CEOs and general counsels ignore them at their own peril.
Since Nov. 5, there has been significant speculation about what the election of Donald Trump will mean for the Department of Justice over the next four years. That is understandable given the vast authority of DOJ and some of the President-elect’s statements. But change is also coming to State Attorney General offices across the country.
At first blush, it may not be apparent how the election of a new President will impact the work of 50 individually elected (or in a few cases, appointed) State Attorneys General. They are state rather than federal actors, and their elections are for the most part not even on the same cycle.
Even so, the politics of Presidential elections drives substantial elements of State Attorneys General agendas in both blue and red states.
For starters, we should expect to see Democrat AGs filing lawsuits against the new Trump administration to stymie some of its signature initiatives. This will be history repeating itself. During President Trump’s first term, Democrat AGs sued his administration more than 150 times. Those lawsuits halted the abolition of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program, the declaration of a national emergency to fund construction of a border wall, and the implementation of census-related policies targeting noncitizens.
This time around, we should expect to see legal fights over the likely federal shift on antitrust, environmental, health, immigration and labor policies.
While these Attorney General offices will spend significant time and resources directly challenging the Trump administration, the private sector should not expect an enforcement holiday. It is far more likely that the most significant impact the Trump administration will have on these Attorneys General offices is to spur their activity in areas where the federal government is seen as overly business-friendly and limiting its enforcement efforts.