JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — When Missouri’s attorney general says he’ll seize Chinese-owned assets to force China to pay a $24.5 billion award won by the state in a lawsuit over COVID-19, the threat might be more important than actually collecting any money.
Similarly, when Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey sued Starbucks last month, alleging that the coffee shop chain with a white male CEO discriminated against white men in hiring, the point might have been less about winning in court than the fight itself. He’s attacking the diversity, equity and inclusion programs that liberals have championed and his Democratic counterparts have supported.
Over the past decade, state attorneys general have become increasingly visible for suing presidential administrations of the opposite political party and pursuing policy goals through warnings and public demand letters. They are not only their states’ top law enforcement officials but now also chief advocates for a variety of causes — and few seem as busy at it as Bailey.
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“If you’re suing everybody, why not China?” said Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of the nonprofit Brookings Institution’s Lawfare publication.
Lower-profile offices become focused on national politics
For decades, attorneys general promised to fight crime by advocating tougher criminal sentences and defending convictions in serious cases while enforcing consumer protection laws and ousting the occasional errant local official.
They still do, but lawsuits and threats of lawsuits over national issues now get far more attention. Attorneys general argue that they’ve been pushed into it by presidents and federal agency heads.
North Dakota’s Drew Wrigley, a Republican, said environmental rules pursued under President Joe Biden compelled agricultural and energy-producing states like his to ask courts to force the Democratic administration to “respect appropriate constitutional and legal boundaries.”
“The Biden administration routinely abused executive authority, and regularly exercised power that Congress did not give them,” Wrigley said. “Our court victories have been victories for the rule of law in this nation.”
The shift started in the 1990s, when 46 attorneys general banded together to sue tobacco companies. A settlement led to annual payments to states exceeding $165 billion as of 2024.
“That was really what gave AGs the experience to realize that they could make a major difference on the national level, even if the executive branch and even if Congress didn’t act,” said Paul Nolette, a Marquette University political scientist.
Later, with Democrat Barack Obama in the White House, Republican attorneys general filed legal challenges against his administration. Democratic AGs did the same during Republican President Donald Trump’s first term.
“As the United States has become much more polarized, that’s been matched by the politicization of the attorney general’s office,” said Drury University political scientist Daniel Ponder.
Lawsuits may be derided but they reap political benefits
Critics deride such tactics as grandstanding, but attorneys general have incentives to pursue them.
In 2022, Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro won the Pennsylvania governor’s race after touting more than 20 legal challenges to Trump administration actions, and he was a leading contender for his party’s 2024 vice presidential nomination.
Kansas Republican Kris Kobach lost races for governor in 2018 and the U.S. Senate in 2020 but resurrected his political career in 2022 by winning the attorney general’s race after promising to spend each breakfast thinking about potential lawsuits against the Biden administration.
Bailey’s two predecessors in Missouri, both Republicans, won U.S. Senate seats: Eric Schmitt in 2022 and Josh Hawley in 2018. Bailey’s own headline-grabbing work helped him get an audience before Trump as a potential U.S. attorney general appointee, although ultimately he didn’t get the job.
He defended Missouri’s lawsuit against China — filed by Schmitt, his predecessor, and inherited by Bailey — by pointing to the result, though Wittes and other experts believe it will be difficult to seize assets and collect money from China. Missouri claimed that China hoarded personal protective equipment during the pandemic, harming the state.
“This historic victory is a significant first step in holding wrongdoers accountable,” Bailey said.
Missouri has had plenty of targets besides China
Of course, China is far from Missouri’s only target.
Bailey has threatened private gyms over bathroom policies, demanded that public schools ban drag shows and sued New York state, claiming that Trump’s 2024 hush money criminal trial was “overt meddling” in the election that limited Missouri voters’ information.
Bailey was in office less than three weeks in January 2023 when he joined a multistate lawsuit against the Biden administration over immigration policy, and the next day, he was challenging a policy allowing 401(k) managers to use environmental, social and governance principles in their investing. Missouri kept joining lawsuits against Biden’s administration: four over immigration policy, three over efforts to forgive college student loan debt, two over environmental rules, two over gun safety initiatives and two over transgender rights measures.
Even after Biden left the White House, Bailey wasn’t done with him.
In a Facebook post last week, Bailey called for the Trump administration to investigate Biden’s mental fitness late in his term and whether it undercut the “legality of executive orders, pardons, and all other actions issued in his name.”
Suing Starbucks: Diversity goals as alleged discrimination
Bailey’s lawsuit against Starbucks came weeks after Trump ordered an end to the federal government’s DEI programs.
The lawsuit alleges the company’s DEI programs are pretexts for quotas limiting the number of white, male employees, resulting in a “more female and less white” workforce since 2020, when CEO Brian Niccol, who is white, took over. Bailey argues that Starbucks practices, including actions against managers who don’t meet DEI goals, violate state and federal laws against making employment decisions based on race or sex.
“I have a responsibility to protect Missourians from a company that actively engages in systemic race and sex discrimination,” Bailey said.
Starbucks did not respond to a request for comment and has until April 7 to file its response to the lawsuit.
“Even if these suits are ultimately unsuccessful, they can have other effects in terms of changing behavior on the part of the defendants, in some cases delaying policy for a long time,” Marquette’s Nolette said.
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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas. Associated Press writer Jack Dura also contributed reporting from Bismarck, North Dakota.
