SACRAMENTO, Calif. — State lawmakers will return to the Capitol in early December for a special session, aimed at allocating funds to the DOJ to fight the Trump Administration.
Two weeks ago, as ABC10 reported, Governor Gavin Newsom called that special session, to convene Dec. 2.
He’s asking lawmakers to “provide additional funding to the California Department of Justice [DOJ] and other agencies, departments, boards, and offices within the Executive Branch” to support filing lawsuits “challenging actions taken by the incoming Trump Administration…”
Back during Trump’s first presidency, California sued him – on average – once every 12 days. 122 lawsuits.
CalMatters reports, our state spent $41 million during those four years fighting Trump’s “regulations and rollbacks involving climate change, immigration, consumer rights and more.” Early in Trump’s first presidency, the California DOJ requested $6.5 additional dollars in the budget, specifically to pay for the added workload of fighting “overbroad Federal directives that threaten the constitutional rights of California's citizens,” according to a document cited by the Sacramento Bee.
“If Trump attacks your rights, I’ll be there,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta at a news conference he held two days after this month’s election. “Whatever the financial situation when we have full frontal assaults on who we are, what we stand for, our people, our resources, we will fight back.”
How much is the state willing to spend for litigation in Trump’s second presidency? Leaders have not yet given a number, but a report released this week from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office [LAO] show California doesn’t have any wiggle room in its spending right now.
The report contains the LAO’s budget projections for the coming year. It says the budget picture “is fair for the upcoming year,” but the state could face “double-digit operating deficits in the years to come” if it doesn’t cut spending or raise taxes in the future.
Therefore, the LAO said, “this year’s budget does not have capacity for new commitments, particularly ones that are ongoing.”
Kevin Johnson is Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis School of Law and witnessed California’s legal battles during the first Trump Administration. He says it’s unclear how much the state might need to allocate to legally fight the Trump Administration.
“We're playing a bit of a guessing game at this point,” Johnson said.
It takes a lot of resources, but the DOJ already employs about a thousand attorneys, he added.
“I'm not necessarily very worried about the Attorney General's office being able to staff this or the costs of it,” Johnson said. “If the legislature and the Governor wanted to increase the number of areas to bring suit or to increase the number of attorneys involved in this, that – as you know - would cost money.”
Speaking at a news conference Thursday, Newsom told reporters he’ll be putting out a detailed budget plan in coming weeks. Between that and the special session set for early December, we’ll likely learn more in the next couple of months about exactly how much state leaders want to spend fighting the Trump Administration - and how they might come up with those funds.
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