JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — When Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey says he’ll seize assets to force China to pay a $24.5 billion award won in a lawsuit over COVID-19, the action might be aimed more at bolstering conservatives’ arguments that China was responsible for the pandemic than collecting any money.
Similarly, when the Republican attorney general sued Starbucks last month, alleging that the coffee shop chain discriminated against white men in hiring, the point might have been less about winning in court than attacking diversity, equity and inclusion programs that conservatives oppose.
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 as Bailey.
“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 focus 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.”
Bailey's office said in a statement Wednesday: "Our efforts are an overall testament to the abandonment of the rule of law by the left and wouldn’t be necessary if progressive politicians and bureaucrats would simply adhere to our Constitution.”
Democrats argue the same case against Republican President Donald Trump. The Democratic Attorneys General Association issued a statement Wednesday calling its members “the first and last line of defense against the Trump administration’s harmful and unlawful policies.”
The shift from local to national issues 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 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 are criticized but reap political benefits
Critics deride the lawsuits 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. His office noted Wednesday that his margin of victory in November was larger than any other Missouri statewide candidate. It was larger than Trump's, too.
“Each week, our office receives thousands of comments and notes of support,” his office said.
He defended Missouri’s lawsuit against China — filed by Schmitt, his predecessor, and inherited by Bailey — by pointing to the result as a “historic victory” from arguing that China harmed the state by hoarding personal protective equipment during the pandemic. Wittes and other experts believe it will be difficult to seize assets and collect money from China.
Missouri has other 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 diversity, equity and inclusion 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.
Starbucks said in a statement that the company disagrees with Bailey and his allegations and said the coffee maker is “deeply committed to creating opportunity for every single” employee.
“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 in Bismarck, North Dakota, contributed to this report.
Summer Ballentine And John Hanna, The Associated Press
