Suing the Trump administration is costing California a lot in legal bills. Suing and getting sued back has cost more than $9 million for the state in the 2017-18 fiscal year alone, according to the Sacramento Bee. That’s a $6 million jump from the last fiscal year, according to the figures from California’s justice department.
In the lawsuit war, California is way ahead of the Trump administration, having sued the federal government 44 times, while only getting sued three times in return since President Donald Trump took office in 2017.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a staunch ally of Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown, said the expense is no big deal, considering it totals less than one percent of the Justice Department’s $894 million annual budget. He claimed California taxpayers don’t resent the spending if it’s aimed against the “intrusion” of the federal government.
“When you put into perspective that less than one percent of our budget is going to defend our people, our values and our resources, I think most people would say ‘Don’t stop,'” Becerra told the Bee. “[A]ny one of those items … would dwarf what we’d have to spend for all the litigation efforts that we’ve undertaken to defend the state of California against the federal government’s intrusion.”
But some Republicans disagreed, saying the judicial conflict just squanders taxpayer dollars.
“Just because California and its Democratic leaders disagree with something the president or his administration does, that doesn’t mean the courts are the place to have that disagreement,” said Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican National Committee lawyer. “Xavier Becerra is misusing the courts to score political points.”