Az Law
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has suffered back-to-back setbacks in the U.S. Supreme Court on successive days, when the U.S. Solicitor General filed its long-awaited brief Tuesday night strongly urging the Court to reject Arizona’s effort to sue California for unconstitutional taxes.
The case was one of two attempts by Arizona this year to convince the highest court in the land to accept original jurisdiction of a legal action (rather than its normal appellate jurisdiction). The Supreme Court rejected the other one on Monday, when it ordered that Arizona could not sue Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family in the Supreme Court.
The filing against California is a less unusual case than the Purdue Pharma/Sackler opioid profits effort. In June, the Justices asked the U.S. Solicitor General to file a brief expressing the Department of Justice’s position on whether the high court should consider Arizona’s case against California.
The Solicitor General’s position was not friendly to Arizona. Against the backdrop that the Supreme Court has often said that it should only accept original jurisdiction cases sparingly, the SG states that this is not such a case:
