MD Democrats -- BUT NOT HOGAN -- Want to Sue Trump Over the Immigration Moratorium

Gov. Larry Hogan has decried the legislature's effort to give Attorney General Brian Frosh the authority to sue the federal government without his permission as a usurpation of his power. No doubt he would like this issue to be about him so he could chuck it onto the pile of conflicts for which he has a well-worn response about Democratsin Annapolis who just can't handle having a Republican governor. But the measure, which won final passage in the House of Delegates today, is not about him. It's not even really about President Donald Trump, although his executive order on immigration and talk of other plans to roll back consumer protections and environmental regulations were the catalysts for the effort. What it is about is an unusual element of state law that prevents a duly elected constitutional officer, the attorney general, from exercising his duties to safeguard the interests of Marylanders in a way that virtually every other attorney general in the nation can.

Attorneys general in at least 41 states have what is known as common law authority to instigate or defend lawsuits on behalf of the state without asking anyone's permission. But courts here have interpreted Maryland's constitution as stripping our attorneys general of that authority and instead requiring that either the governor or the General Assemblyauthorize such an action. Usually, that's a mere technicality, but problems have cropped up at least once before when the governor and attorney general were of different political parties. In 2005, former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. refused to let then-Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. join in a lawsuit against the Bush administration's Environmental Protection Agency over regulations that would have exempted coal fired power plants from strict mercury pollution limits.

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