Oct 27, 2020 · The letter was led by District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine (D) and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D). “The Trump administration’s proposed rule to severely restrict ...
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley named Steve Marshall state attorney general in February to fill the vacancy created by former attorney general Luther Strange’s appointment to the U.S. Senate. Marshall, who served as Marshall County’s district attorney for 16 years, will be attorney general until January 2019, when Strange’s original term expires. In addition to joining the ranks of anti-immigration hard-liners, Marshall has sued Birmingham Mayor William Bell for covering a Confederate monument with plastic, citing a state law that prohibits the “relocation, removal, alteration, or other disturbance of any monument on public property that has been in place for 40 years or more.”
Herbert Slatery pulled his support last week from the effort to end DACA, urging Tennessee Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker to use legislation to support unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. “It is my sincere hope that the important issues raised by the States will be resolved by the people’s representatives in the halls of Congress, not in a courtroom,” Slatery wrote. He was appointed by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 2014 for an eight-year term that expires in 2022. In April 2016, Slatery argued that Tennessee’s anti-transgender “bathroom bill” could cost the state millions of dollars in federal funding, but in May 2016, he said Tennessee would cover the legal costs if schools chose not to follow Obama-era anti-discrimination policies toward transgender students. He also joined 10 other states in suing Obama’s Department of Education over the policy.
When Patrick Morrisey assumed office in 2013, he was the first Republican attorney general in West Virginia since 1933. He was re-elected in 2016 with 52 percent of the vote to Democrat Doug Reynolds’s 42 percent, and he is a 2018 candidate for the U.S. Senate. During his first campaign for attorney general, Morrisey supported the multi-state effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and he opposed the Obama administration’s rulings against West Virginia’s coal industry. As attorney general, he has filed more than a dozen lawsuits and amicus briefs challenging the EPA, with little success. He has also filed several amicus briefs in cases centered on the Second Amendment. During the Obama years, Morrissey made “fighting federal overreach” central to his job as state attorney general.
Butch Otter was the sole governor to join the group of attorneys general pushing to end DACA. Otter has been active in Idaho’s Republican party since 1972, serving as a state representative, lieutenant governor, and in U.S. Congress. His anti-immigration stance is not limited to stripping DACA recipients of protection; following the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, he opposed the resettlement of Syrian refugees to Idaho. “It makes no sense under the best of circumstances for the United States to allow people into our country who have avowed the desire to harm our communities, our institutions, and our people,” he said at the time.
Lawrence Wasden has served as Idaho’s attorney general since 2003, and he is a rumored 2018 gubernatorial candidate. Wasden was one of 14 state attorneys general who sued the Obama administration for its health care overhaul on the day Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act.
Leslie Rutledge was the first Republican and woman to be elected Arkansas’ attorney general. She won the 2015 election with 52 percent of the vote to Democrat Nate Steel’s 43 percent. Since then, she has reliably taken up the national Republican agenda. A Washington County, Arkansas, judge in 2016 upheld a law that prohibits business owners and landlords from firing or evicting someone based on sexual orientation or gender identity. (Churches, religious schools, day care facilities, and religious organizations are exempt from the law.) Rutledge appealed the decision to the Arkansas Supreme Court, which took her side and reversed the lower court’s decision. The state Supreme Court ruled that the ordinance violated a state law that bans cities from enacting protections not already covered by state law, since the Arkansas Civil Rights Act does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The justices did not rule on the constitutionality of the provision, despite Rutledge’s request that they do so.
Doug Peterson was elected Nebraska’s attorney general in 2014, defeating Democrat Janet Stewart with 66 percent of the vote. He was an assistant attorney general from 1988 to 1990 and then spent nearly 15 years in private practice before running for attorney general. He has taken a strong position against the legalization of medical and recreational marijuana. He has complained about marijuana from Colorado crossing the state line into Nebraska, and he has challenged Colorado’s approval of recreational marijuana use on the grounds that it violates the federal Controlled Substances Act.