Washington AG has spent 34,000 hours fighting Trump on behalf of state

The Washington State Attorney General’s Office (AGO) has devoted more than 34,000 staff hours to lawsuits against the Trump administration since November 2024. While the office has disclosed limited direct costs, the full financial impact to taxpayers remains unknown.

According to records obtained by The Center Square, the reported 34,000 hours amounts to approximately 1,416 full workdays, or about 3.9 years of continuous labor for a single individual. To better understand the scale, private-sector attorneys typically have annual billable targets ranging from 2,000 to 2,400 hours. Using that benchmark, the AGO’s workload is roughly equivalent to between 14 and 17 full-time lawyers working for an entire year. However, Citizen Action Defense Fund Executive Director Jackson Maynard characterized the effort more broadly, suggesting it is comparable to 100 lawyers working full time, while the AGO itself says about 30 attorneys are directly assigned to the litigation.

The AGO initially logged 11,000 hours during the eight months following the November 2024 election. That pace accelerated significantly, with an additional 23,000 hours billed between July and October 2025 alone. Altogether, more than two-thirds of the total hours were accumulated within just six months, highlighting a sharp escalation in legal activity.

This surge is part of a broader national legal landscape. According to Just Security’s legal tracker, 758 lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration during its second term. Of those, 338 cases are still awaiting court rulings. So far, 19 cases have been resolved in favor of the plaintiffs, while 30 have been decided in favor of the federal government.

Within Washington, Attorney General Nick Brown has filed or joined 58 federal lawsuits, taking a leading or co-leading role in 22 of them. These cases collectively involve disputes over approximately $15 billion in federal funding and policies.

The Washington Attorney General’s federal litigation tracker shows that these lawsuits span a wide range of policy areas and federal actions. The cases include challenges to executive orders affecting election procedures, such as voter eligibility and mail-in voting requirements, as well as lawsuits opposing changes to federal funding streams for healthcare providers, mental health programs, and education initiatives. Additional litigation targets efforts to reduce or eliminate disaster preparedness funding, including programs administered through FEMA, and disputes over federal attempts to impose new administrative requirements on states.

The tracker also reflects legal challenges involving immigration enforcement policies, civil rights protections, and access to public services for vulnerable populations. Environmental and regulatory disputes are another major category, with cases contesting changes to federal environmental rules and the redirection of congressionally approved funds. Taken together, the lawsuits represent a broad legal strategy addressing election law, healthcare, emergency management, education, immigration, environmental policy, and constitutional questions about the balance of power between federal and state governments, with Washington seeking to protect programs tied to roughly $15 billion in federal funding.

The newly obtained records show that a substantial portion of the AGO’s time has been concentrated on a handful of major legal challenges. Roughly 3,000 hours were spent on litigation related to mental health funding cuts, while more than 2,000 hours were devoted to a lawsuit involving the potential shutdown of FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program. Another 1,700 hours were spent addressing potential cuts to funding for teen reproductive and sexual health education through the Personal Responsibility Education Program.

Earlier reporting also revealed that about one-third of the initial 11,000 hours logged after the election were focused on a single lawsuit concerning federal funding restrictions tied to gender-related medical procedures.

Although the AGO reported only about $30,000 in direct costs and fees, it emphasized that the true cost of staff time is difficult to calculate due to varying salaries and roles based on experience.

AGO Deputy Communications Director Mike Faulk told The Center Square that calculating a precise figure is challenging because the work involves a mix of attorneys, investigators, and support staff, all of whom are paid at different rates. Attorney compensation also varies widely based on experience and seniority. Additionally, the office does not operate on a billable-hour system like private law firms, further complicating efforts to produce a single comprehensive cost figure. Often, the AGO farms out cases to private firms despite having over 700 lawyers on staff and sticking the taxpayers with the bill.

Faulk defended the expenditure, stating that most of the financial impact is reflected in the time staff have devoted to investigating and litigating the cases, rather than in direct out-of-pocket expenses.