AG Actions Database

Date
This is the date that the action was tak­en. If a sin­gle entry includes a series of actions (such as a law­suit and a set­tle­ment), the list­ed date is the date of the ear­li­est action in the series.

State
A state is tagged if that state’s attor­ney gen­er­al par­tic­i­pat­ed in the action. This does not include oth­er state agen­cies or any local par­ties. For exam­ple, if New York City joined a law­suit, but the New York AG did not, New York would not be list­ed as a par­tic­i­pat­ing state in the entry.

Agency
This field lists the agen­cies that the AGs tar­get­ed in the action (e.g. agen­cies that AGs sent com­ments to, filed a law­suit against, etc.). This does not include agen­cies that may have joined the AGs in the action (e.g. agen­cies that signed a com­ment let­ter along with AGs, etc.). 

Issue
This field indi­cates the issue area(s) that the action address­es. Issues are orga­nized into larg­er umbrel­la cat­e­gories, such as ​“Fos­sil Fuels” and ​“Safe­ty & Tox­i­cs.” Some of these umbrel­la cat­e­gories also con­tain sub-cat­e­gories, which allow you to look for actions relat­ed to more spe­cif­ic issues. Please note that actions can have mul­ti­ple issue types.

Admin­is­tra­tion
This denotes fed­er­al admin­is­tra­tion that AGs engaged with on the action, if applic­a­ble. The admin­is­tra­tion cor­re­sponds to who­ev­er was pres­i­dent when the rule at issue was pro­mul­gat­ed, even if the case didn’t start until a new pres­i­dent was in office. Actions that were not tak­en at the fed­er­al lev­el are tagged as ​“non-fed­er­al.”

Doc­u­ment Type
This field denotes the types of doc­u­ments includ­ed in the entry (which does not nec­es­sar­i­ly line up with the types of doc­u­ments from the action). For exam­ple, if an entry is about a law­suit that was set­tled, but the set­tle­ment doc­u­ments are not pub­licly avail­able, the entry would not be tagged with ​“Set­tle­ment” since we do not pro­vide the set­tle­ment in our entry. Instead, the entry would just be tagged with ​“Press Release,” since that is where the infor­ma­tion on the set­tle­ment was obtained.

Action Type
This is the type of action that AGs took. Entries can have mul­ti­ple action types. For exam­ple, if an AG files a law­suit against a com­pa­ny for break­ing an envi­ron­men­tal law, the action type would be list­ed as both ​“Envi­ron­men­tal Enforce­ment” and ​“Lit­i­ga­tion.”

Out­come
This field only appears when the ​“Action Type” field is set to lit­i­ga­tion (since it is only applic­a­ble to lit­i­ga­tion entries). A case is count­ed as a win if the state AGs won a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion, sum­ma­ry judg­ment, or the major­i­ty of the relief they asked for was grant­ed; or if the agency with­drew the rule at issue after lit­i­ga­tion was filed. A case is count­ed as a loss if the relief was not grant­ed or the agency won a motion to dis­miss or sum­ma­ry judg­ment, or if the rule at issue was revoked for anoth­er rea­son (such as in anoth­er case) but the AGs lost on their demands with­in the spe­cif­ic case at hand. A case is tagged as a par­tial win if some of the relief was grant­ed and some of the relief was not grant­ed. Pend­ing cas­es indi­cate that the out­come hasn’t been deter­mined yet. To sub­mit updates, please email [email protected]​nyu.​edu.