State attorneys general banding together to take on an administration of the opposite party is not a new phenomenon. But former AGs, academics and lawyers say partisanship appears to be on the rise among the states' chief lawyers.
Paul Nolette, a professor at Marquette University who studies attorneys general, said the increase began under former President George W. Bush, but became more intense during President Barack Obama's eight years in office.
"Partisanship is more pronounced than it had been in the past," Nolette said. "With the Obama administration, you saw, really for the first time, Republican attorneys general get much more organized. Now you have Democratic attorneys general that are even more organized than they were during the Bush administration."
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Attorneys general are elected in 43 states. In the other seven, the AG is either appointed by the governor or chosen by the legislature or state supreme court. Next year, 30 states will hold elections for the next AG. Those elections differ from previous ones thanks to a recent vote by the Republican AGs' political spending arm, the Republican Attorneys General Association. The group voted to target Democratic incumbent attorneys general a tactic that both the Republican and Democratic attorneys general associations declined to use in the past. In light of RAGA's vote in March, Democrats are expected to take the same position. (The Democrats' group declined to comment.)
Republican AGs aren't the only ones seeking expanded authority. Nearly a month after the presidential inauguration, Maryland state lawmakers voted to give the attorney general Democrat Brian Frosh in this case the unprecedented ability to sue the federal government without approval from the governor. While the state legislature in Maryland is majority Democrat, the state's governor, Larry Hogan, is Republican. State lawmakers said they passed the legislation to enable Frosh to formally oppose Trump's policies, like most other Democratic AGs can.
Frosh took advantage of that power in June by filing a lawsuit, along with D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, against Trump over his business holdings. The Republican AGs called the suit "frivolous" and "grandstanding."
But Marquette's Nolette said that for AGs like Racine and Frosh, the lawsuit is predictable.
"It's almost kind of like sharks in the water when you have a president whose approval rating is below 40 percent, because in that case there's not much of a downside, especially in a blue state," he said.