Suing the federal government has become the most prominent form of coordinated national AG activism in recent years.
Coalitions of AGs have sued the Trump Administration repeatedly across a range of issues, such as on immigration, health care, and environmental policy. These coalitions have been led mainly by Democratic AGs, such as Washington State’s Bob Ferguson, pictured above. During the Obama Administration, however, it was mostly Republican coalitions bringing these coordinated efforts, mostly famously challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
The prominence of coordinated multistate lawsuits to challenge federal policy is a relatively recent phenomenon. While states have a long history of suing the federal government, these were typically single-state efforts claiming specific harm to that state. Now, partisan coalitions of AGs have used multistate lawsuits as a way to both block federal policies and to prompt national action.
You can find more information about these multistate lawsuits at the links below.
This information will be continuously updated as AGs file new multistate challenges to the federal government.
A listing of multistate litigation against the federal government from 1980 to the present. The table is fully searchable, and provides additional information about each case as well as the original complaints (if available).
Additional charts and aggregate totals concerning this multistate litigation, providing a visual overview of this activity.
An explanation of which cases are included and excluded from the totals, as well as how the data was collected.