SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – In a letter signed by 16 additional states to Climate Action 100+ (CA100+) members, Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes reiterated legal concerns over association with the organization as it shifts to Phase 2. The multi-state warning notifies the members to immediately evaluate the lawfulness of the radical CA100+ agenda to “take action” in using investor money to pressure companies “to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the value chain” in line with the Paris Agreement goals. The letter also points out that the world’s largest asset managers are leaving CA100+ because of legal risks previously identified by state attorneys general and that Phase 2 heightens legal concerns. 

“Over the last several years, legal concerns have risen exponentially as a result of the radical agenda and seemingly extortive practices of Climate Action 100+. Although environmental stewardship is critically important to our states and constituents, CA100’s extreme, unrealistic, and legally suspect ESG mandates will continue to be scrutinized and challenged by the State of Utah and at least 16 other states,” said General Reyes. “The fact that many of the world’s largest asset managers are leaving CA100 due to legal risks of membership is simply the beginning of what we will see as more of the organization’s liability and practices are exposed.”

In the letter, the States argue that leading asset managers have belatedly recognized the legal risk of CA100+ commitments. J.P. Morgan Asset Management, State Street Global Advisors, PIMCO, and Invesco all recently announced their withdrawal from CA100+. In addition, BlackRock announced that it will limit involvement with CA100+ to its international arm and will now pursue net-zero goals in engagements and proxy votes only for clients who have expressly asked it to do so.

The States also highlight the conflict between CA100+ membership and at least six different legal duties:

1. The fiduciary duty of loyalty requires asset managers to act solely in their client’s financial interests.
2. The fiduciary duty of care requires asset managers to provide advice that is in the best interest of their clients, based on the client’s objectives, and to provide advice and monitoring over the course of the relationship.
3. Antitrust laws prohibit, among other things, contracts or combinations in restraint of trade.
4. Various holding company laws may apply here.
5. State laws prohibit deceptive acts or practices towards consumers, as well as making false statements or omitting facts concerning the offer or sale of securities.
6. The SEC requires certain information to be filed pursuant to Schedule 13D.

Joining Utah on the letter were the States of Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, and Wyoming.

Read the letter here.

In any given month, the Utah Attorney General’s Office can join dozens of amici, also known as ‘friend of the court’ briefs, or sign the AG’s name to a persuasive letter that argues for or against a hot topic.

Why does the office do this? The answer makes sense – legally speaking!

In this episode, Deputy Solicitor General Christopher Bates explains why our office joins these letters and briefs, the costs and benefits, and how the entire process works.

Listen to the podcast here.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Attorney General Sean D. Reyes joined an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court in Chiaverini v Napoleon over a Fourth Amendment question. The brief, which was led by the State of Iowa, argues that the length-of-detention rule supersedes a charge-specific rule when determining Fourth Amendment violations by the government.

Jason Chiaverini, a jewelry store owner, purchased items illegally obtained from a previous owner. He was arrested and charged with retaining stolen property, violating his licensing arrangement, and laundering money. The case was dismissed on a technicality apart from the merits, which led to Chiaverni countering with a lawsuit claiming that his arrest was unconstitutional and that there was no probable cause to support the counts that preceded his arrest. Both the district and appeals courts found that the arrest was, in fact, constitutional and that Chiaverni had no lawful basis for his challenge, clearing the way for this attempt at the U.S. Supreme Court.

In their brief, the coalition of attorneys general argues that “the Sixth Circuit did not err in denying petitioner’s Fourth Amendment claim for malicious prosecution, [and that] this Court should not adopt petitioner’s overly broad approach.”

The States write, “The length-of-detention rule should prevail over Petitioner’s proposed charge-specific rule. The charge-specific rule only requires that plaintiffs prove that a charge lacked probable cause to find malicious prosecution. From there, courts must presume that the invalid charge caused an unreasonable search or seizure. But an invalid charge alone is not a Fourth Amendment violation. Therefore, the charge-specific rule removes the burden of proving an unreasonable search or seizure from the plaintiff.”

Joining Utah and Iowa on the brief were the States of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas.

Read the brief here.

In November 2023, Utah filed a lawsuit against insulin manufacturers Eli Lilly, Novo, Nordisk, and Sanofi, as well as pharmacy benefits managers CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and Optum RX. The lawsuit claims that the companies charge too much for insulin due to their pricing scheme.

Since filing, consumers have contacted our office and shared personal stories of their sacrifices to afford this crucial medicine.

Mark Holliday from our office is the lead attorney on the case for the state. Legally Speaking welcomes him with an update and his perspective on the situation.

Read about the state’s lawsuit against insulin here.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Attorney General Sean D. Reyes joined a comment letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the pending Clean Air Act (CAA) regulatory proposal Standards of Performance for New Stationary Sources and Emission Guidelines for Existing Sources: Large Municipal Waste Combustors Voluntary Remand Response and 5-Year Review. The State of Indiana led the letter, urging the EPA to “abandon the proposed regulation.”

On January 23, 2024, the EPA published its proposed rule. The press release announcing the rule states that the rule [would] reduc[e] existing disproportionate and adverse effects on overburdened communities.” However, the States make the case that “the EPA’s environmental justice analysis goes beyond the scope granted to it by Congress.”

In their letter, the attorneys general argue that “the EPA’s proposed rule is arbitrary and capricious, [that] the EPA’s proposed rule should not have considered any ‘environmental justice’ analysis, [and that] the EPA should extend the comment period to allow for substantive input from all stakeholders.”

The coalition writes, “For states with waste-to-energy facilities, those facilities play an integral role in our states’ economies and our approaches to waste and resource management….These facilities serve as an essential part of a necessary ‘all of the above’ energy policy – they help recycle metals while providing good jobs and clean, affordable electricity for local communities. Furthermore, WTE facilities often operate in partnership with local governments. We are concerned…with the Proposed Rule’s excessively burdensome effects on those facilities.”

Utah and Indiana were joined on the letter by the States of Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas.

Read the letter here.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Attorney General Sean D. Reyes filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari at the Supreme Court of the United States in Utah v. Valdez. The case involves whether and how Fifth Amendment protections apply to a defendant who refuses to provide his cellphone passcode in response to a valid search warrant.

Police arrested Respondent Alfonso Valdez for kidnapping, robbery, and assault. They obtained a valid search warrant for his cellphone – which they seized from him when he was arrested – so they could access text messages he had used to arrange the meeting with his victim. But they could not execute the warrant because Valdez refused to disclose his phone’s passcode, which was a nine-dot swipe pattern. At trial, the State introduced evidence about Valdez’s refusal to disclose his passcode and invited the jury to draw adverse inferences from his refusal. The Utah Supreme Court held this violated Valdez’s Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

The questions presented to the U.S. Supreme Court are as follows:

1. Is disclosing a cellphone passcode with no substantive meaning testimonial under the Fifth Amendment when the only information communicated is the passcode?
   
2. Does the Fifth Amendment foregone-conclusion doctrine apply to disclosing a cellphone passcode when the government has evidence the phone belongs to the suspect?

In the brief, the State of Utah writes that the Utah Supreme Court wrongly concluded that the Fifth Amendment protected Valdez’s refusal to provide his passcode. Disclosing a cellphone passcode with no substantive meaning is not testimonial when the only information communicated is the passcode because the passcode itself doesn’t communicate anything. It’s merely a meaningless set of numbers or a meaningless swipe pattern. And even if disclosing the passcode is testimonial, the Fifth Amendment foregone-conclusion doctrine readily applies when, as here, the government has evidence the phone belongs to the suspect. Providing the passcode in that scenario “adds little or nothing to sum total of the Government’s information” about the passcode’s existence, possession, and authenticity. Thus, the Fifth Amendment did not protect Valdez’s refusal to provide his passcode.

Read the brief here.

VERNAL, UTAH—Last week, in the Eighth District Court before Presiding Judge Clark A. McClellan, Mannix George Glines, 50, was sentenced to one to 15 years in prison for financially exploiting a vulnerable adult. Glines was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $60,168.

This is Glines’ second felony conviction prosecuted by this office for the financial exploitation of the same victim, his mother.

“Stealing from or abusing any vulnerable person is offensive, but exploiting a close family member repeatedly is particularly reprehensible,” said Attorney General Reyes.

“I applaud our Medicaid Fraud Division in the Utah AG Office, led by Director Kaye Lynn Wootton.  Her nationally recognized team does an amazing job protecting the state’s most vulnerable adults from abuse, neglect, and exploitation.”

The Medicaid Fraud and Patient Abuse Division of the Utah Attorney General’s Office filed charges against Glines in November 2022. Glines pleaded guilty to one count of financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult on January 3, 2024, in violation of § 76-5-111.4(2)(b)-(c), a second-degree felony.

Glines was taken into custody after the hearing to begin his sentence at the Utah State Correctional Facility.

Note: The Medicaid Fraud and Patient Abuse Division of the Utah Attorney General’s Office receives 75 percent of its funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under a grant award totaling $2,825,860 for the federal fiscal year 2023. The State of Utah funds the remaining 25 percent.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Attorney General Sean D. Reyes is co-leading a lawsuit in Kansas v. Biden over the President’s renewed attempts to unlawfully cancel student loan debts after a defeat at the Supreme Court of the United States on this very issue last summer. The challenge was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, asking the court to find that the U.S. Department of Education rule is unlawful.

The latest effort to cancel student debts without congressional authorization occurred in the days following a rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court over the administration’s first attempt, which utilized a provision of the HEROES Act to justify this action. This new maneuver from the U.S. Department of Education featured the “SAVE Plan,” yet it based its cost estimate and other details on the first salvo being left intact by the nation’s high court. The administration has also tried to expedite certain portions of the student loan cancellation before federal courts could weigh in on the plan.

“This attempt by the Biden Administration at massive student loan forgiveness is a desperate and purely political election-year maneuver,” said General Reyes. “The last Biden loan forgiveness program was struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023. Instead of accepting such a clear legal rebuke, the White House blithely ignores precedent and acts like this version is somehow different and less offensive. In fact, the current proposal is even more problematic because it relies on numbers and calculations from its first failed attempt that are invalid and unsustainable.”

In their complaint, the States argue that the action from the U.S. Department of Education violates separation of powers principles, exceeds the Department’s statutory authority and jurisdiction, constitutes arbitrary and capricious agency action, and violates APA procedures.”

Read the complaint here.

The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force has observed a new form of evidence: Computer generated Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM).

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is commonly used to generate illegal images of children in sexual situations, similar to animated CSAM images.

Listen as Sete Aulai, our ICAC Commander, speaks out about this evolving trend. This is occurring at a time when ICAC continues to receive tips, cases, and explicit images, as well as attempts by some suspects to contact live young people.

Listen to the podcast here.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH—Attorney General Sean D. Reyes joined a comment letter to the U.S. Department of Labor regarding its “proposed rule revising the regulations for registered apprenticeships.” The letter, which the State of Tennessee led, notes the coalition’s nationwide concerns over race-based regulations for apprenticeships.

According to the attorneys general, “the proposed rule deviates from the statutory purpose of safeguarding the welfare of apprentices and builds on existing regulations to further entrench an apprenticeship regime dedicated to picking winners and losers based on the color of apprentices’ skin.”

In their letter, the States highlighted “four legal barriers to the type of race-based system the Proposed Rule appears to require.” Those barriers are that “the Department’s imposition of new oversight and data collection requirements on State Apprenticeship Agencies exceeds the scope of the agency’s Spending-Clause authority, [that] the Department’s proposed race-based requirements for apprenticeship program design and administration violate the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, [that] race-based employment decision-making violates Title VII and related civil-rights laws, [and that] ‘what cannot be done directly’ under governing law ‘cannot be done indirectly.’”

The coalition of attorneys general wrote, “As we have previously admonished private employers and the Department of Commerce, neither public nor private employers can lawfully pursue that goal by engaging in racial discrimination, regardless of whether their efforts go under the labels of ‘equity,’ ‘DEIA,’ or other similar euphemisms. Additionally, no federal agency can wield legislative authority beyond that lawfully granted by Congress.”

Joining Utah and Tennessee on the letter were the States of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Read the letter here.