By Tom Hals
(Reuters) – Democratic state attorneys general launched a legal bid this week to defend the Biden administration’s policies on immigration, the environment and guns, just days before Donald Trump takes office on Monday.
Trump has promised to deport millions of people who are in the country illegally, roll back environmental regulations and clean up Biden’s transgender policies. His Republican Party controls Congress, as it did when Trump took office in 2017 for his first term.
On Wednesday, aides from more than a dozen states, including California, New Jersey and Michigan, asked a federal judge to let them take over the role of defending Biden’s rule that provides health insurance to immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.
A group of Republican attorneys general sued in August to block the rule, with the Justice Department defending the case.
“These are really important rules that protect or benefit our citizens, and there’s a good chance the (Trump) Department of Justice won’t defend them,” New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin told Reuters.
Similar coalitions of AGs have moved to intervene in cases defending Biden’s rules on the environment, gun dealers and devices known as “forced reset triggers” that allow firearms to fire faster.
“I don’t wake up every day dying to sue the president of the United States,” Platkin said, adding that Trump is entitled to his plan. “He has no right to violate the rule of law and he has no right to undermine the rights of our residents in ways that hurt them.”
Coalitions of attorneys general have emerged over the past decade, using the courts to thwart federal government policies in areas from health care to energy and financial regulation.
Democratic AGs formed coalitions during Trump’s first administration to oppose his policies, filing 155 lawsuits and achieving an 83% success rate, according to a database maintained by Paul Nolette, a political scientist at Marquette University.
He told Reuters in November that he expected Democratic CEOs to file “a flurry of lawsuits” in the first days of the incoming administration, particularly if Trump takes a series of executive actions on the first day.
Republican lawmakers have launched similar attacks on Biden’s policies.
Nolette said Democratic AGs face a changed legal landscape in Trump’s second term. The judiciary and Supreme Court are more conservative, due to appointments made during Trump’s first term, and his White House staff is expected to be more experienced.
However, Democratic AGs also have more experienced staffs than hundreds of attorneys who have learned from previous legal battles.
