Nick Brown has been Washington's attorney general for one year and has sued the president 50 times. That's nearly once per week.
Brown filed his first lawsuit against the administration the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated. He filed his most recent lawsuit last week.
The legal challenges concern billions of dollars of funding for the state of Washington, the dismantling of federal agencies and the very definition of what it means to be an American.
"We have a lawless president and I don’t say that lightly at all,” Brown said last year. “And it saddens me, frankly, that so much of our time is protecting Americans from their president."
Perhaps the highest-profile lawsuit was one Brown filed first: a challenge to Trump's Inauguration Day executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, the idea rooted in the Constitution that every person born in America is an American citizen. Brown won at both the district court and appeals court levels. But the Supreme Court will soon consider the argument stemming from a different case, out of New Hampshire, without Brown or his team's involvement.
He has also filed lawsuits opposing the administration's efforts to halt gender-affirming care for youths and to cut funding in a variety of ways related to gender and diversity.
Brown is Washington's first new attorney general in a dozen years, after his predecessor, Bob Ferguson, became governor. (Ferguson is Washington's first new governor in a dozen years.)
Ferguson made his name as attorney general partly by suing Trump, something he did nearly 100 times during Trump's first term. Brown is on track to blow by that number by the halfway point of Trump's second term.
"I think we have true elements of fascism coming from Washington, D.C., and
the White House," Brown said last year during a town hall discussing issues impacting the LGBTQIA+ community at Tacoma Community College. "I think we need to continue to say the truth about what is happening and not be scared to say it."
The primary purpose of the attorney general's office isn't to sue the federal government. Brown serves as the lawyer for Washington, representing state agencies in court and acting on behalf of the people against unscrupulous businesses, polluters and scammers.
With more than 800 attorneys, the office is the second largest law firm on the West Coast. Brown, who has two young children, is based in Seattle but works regularly from Olympia (especially during the legislative session) and has traveled to each of the office's 13 regional sites statewide.
© 2026 Yakima Herald-Republic (Yakima, Wash.). Visit www.yakima-herald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
