Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown (D) didn’t wait until President Donald Trump (R) was inaugurated on Jan. 20 to start preparing a defense against likely actions by the incoming administration.
When it became clear last year that Trump would secure a second term, Brown said he and his team immediately began researching executive orders and policies the administration pushed in his first term, from 2017 to 2021.
Now, as Trump approaches 100 days in office, Brown has led or joined more than two dozen lawsuits filed by Democratic attorneys general across the country challenging the rapid-fire policy pronouncements of the new administration.
Brown’s office created a tab on its website called “Federal Actions Response,” which provides Marylanders resources and other information on immigration, human rights, LGBTQ and federal employment for those impacted by Trump administration actions.
“I made a commitment that I would bring or join only those actions where I believe Marylanders are harmed or impacted in a way that’s important and meaningful to them,” Brown said in an interview Friday. “So, we’re going to protect the interest the Marylanders talk about every day around their kitchen table.”
Sen. Chris West (R-Baltimore County) said Friday he had not reviewed any of the current suits against the administration, but he’s certain of one thing.
“There’s no question that this attorney general and the prior attorney general are politically in tune with the mission of the national Democratic Party,” West said. “They’re going to file lawsuits against Republican presidents and not … against Democratic presidents, unless absolutely forced to. Ultimately, the taxpayers are paying for all these lawsuits, for the legal resources needed to bring these lawsuits.”
Brown said the complaints filed have nothing to do with politics.
“I would challenge anyone to point to an action that I have either joined or brought where I cannot connect that action to what it means for Marylanders in their day-to-day lives,” he said.
“These are not political statements,” Brown said. “These are challenges to practical issues and problems that are being created by the Trump administration.”
Lawsuits include one filed Friday, with 18 other states in a federal court in Massachusetts, challenging the administration’s threat to withhold funding from school systems that do not comply with its ban on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. The suit said that action would “unlawfully imperil more than $13.8 billion that are spent to educate our youth” that includes children in high-poverty communities and those with special needs.
Brown was the lead attorney on a suit that challenged the firing of thousands of probationary federal workers. A U.S. District judge in Greenbelt on April 1 issued a preliminary injunction in the case, ordering 20 agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Labor, and Transportation, to give workers their jobs back while the case was tried.
He was also co-lead on a brief supporting a challenge to Trump’s executive orders on transgender rights. One declared that the federal government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and another ordered institutions that receive federal funding to stop gender-affirming care for transgender people.
But Brown doesn’t take all the credit for setting a roadmap to challenge the Trump administration. He gives some credit to his predecessor, Brian Frosh (D), who served as att0rney general in Trump’s last term.
In 2017, the General Assembly passed a resolution authorizing the attorney general to “take specified actions regarding civil and criminal suits” against federal actions that negatively affect Marylanders. That effort was hampered by the fact that any legal action would have to be reviewed by Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who did not allocate the $1 million for legal work the resolution called for, Frosh said.
“I’m envious of Attorney General Brown who gets resources and support from Gov. [Wes] Moore,” Frosh said in an interview Friday.
“I had to cobble together resources to play each case, and we got pro bono assistance from law firms. We had people in the office working overtime, volunteering to work on cases that weren’t in their normal portfolio,” he said. “We worked hard.”
Still, Frosh said his office either led or joined in about 95 suits against the administration during Trump’s first four years in office, well below the blistering pace set by Brown and the other attorneys general in the first few months of Trump’s second term.
Frosh defends the lawsuits, saying the attorney general “goes after bad actors every day of the week. This was just a bad actor [Trump] at the very highest level of government, no different from somebody who’s cheating, stealing or abusing people in Maryland. It’s just from a much higher perch.”
‘Challenging environment’
Frosh said he and other attorneys general notched some important wins against the Trump administration, defending the Affordable Care Act, challenging the delay to an Obama-era rule that let student borrowers get loan forgiveness if a predatory school engaged in deceptive conduct, and blocking the separation of immigrant families at the southern border.
But Frosh said he’s most proud of the emoluments lawsuit filed in 2017 by him and former D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine (D). The suit said Trump illegally profited off his presidency by accepting payments from foreign and domestic officials who stayed at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., and patronized other Trump family businesses.
In the face of appeals from Trump and the Justice Department, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the suit could move forward. By the time it reached the Supreme Court, it was declared moot because Trump was out of office. But Frosh notes that, “We didn’t lose that case. We won it. Then the Supreme Court said, ‘OK, well, it doesn’t matter anymore because he’s not president.’”
He remains concerned about what might happen with current Supreme Court and it 6-3 conservative majority of conservative justices. He pointed to the court’s decision last year that U.S. presidents have full criminal immunity for their official “core constitutional” acts, but not for unofficial acts.
“If you look at the Constitution, the word immunity does not appear in Article 2, which is the article about the president,” he said. “No Supreme Court has ever suggested a president had blanket immunity for official acts. It’s Trump’s dream come true.”
But still, Frosh hopes the Supreme Court will assess the rule of law when it comes to Trump.
“I’m hoping that even this Supreme Court will have the guts to stand up. It’s a much more challenging environment than it was eight years ago,” said Frosh, who now consults with Bloomberg Philanthropies on climate issues and the Maryland Bar Association on criminal justice issues.
‘Our day job’
Both Brown and Frosh stress that, despite the attention they garner, the suits against the Trump administration are not the main focus of the office. The attorney general is the state’s top prosecutor, but he also helps direct and act as a legal adviser for various state agencies, boards and offices.
Under Brown’s leadership since January 2023, and thanks to a Democratic-majority General Assembly, the office has received new responsibilities or expanded authority to include:
- Statutory authority to enforce federal and state civil rights laws, but also bring class action lawsuits in working in conjunction with the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights;
- Expand authority of the Independent Investigations Division to prosecute police-involved deaths and near fatal injuries;
- Establishment of the “Environmental and Natural Resources Crimes Unit,” previously called Environmental Crimes Unit, which can now investigate and prosecute those who break state criminal environmental and natural resources laws; and
- Creation of nohomeforhate,md.gov, the Civil Rights Division’s portal to track hate crime and identify trends.
Besides making history as the state’s first Black attorney general, Brown partnered in October 2023 with Public Defender Natasha Dartigue to co-chair the Maryland Equitable Justice Collaborative (MEJC). The group released a report last month with 18 recommendations to eliminate racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.
“We’ve got a new president and a new administration in Washington which challenged us. We’ve got to step up our game, but we still have our day job,” Brown said.
“I tell my team, ‘You’ve got to maintain your work life balance. You’ve got to take care of yourself, your personal well-being, your family,’” he said. “I’m proud of my team that’s getting the job done.”
Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501(c)(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: scrane@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on Facebook and Twitter.