Attorneys General Increasingly Refusing to Enforce Laws

Elected state attorneys general are playing a new role: refusing to enforce their state's laws, "raising questions about where the line lies between discretion and derelicition of duty," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Tracie Mauriello reports. For example, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane refused to defend a new state law allowing the National Rifle Association to sue over local gun regulations and she refused to defend the state's ban on same-sex marriage. Mauriello cites examples in Indiana, New Jersey and Virginia where attorneys general did not enforce law regarding immigration, guns and failing schools. Professor John C. Harrison of the University of Virginia School of Law told Mauriello, “'It’s probably true that the judgments that executive enforcement officers make about constitutionality of statutes they’re called on to enforce are somewhat influenced by their policy views.”'