The unions that won a circuit court ruling to overturn Wisconsin’s Act 10, the 2011 law stripping most public employees’ collective bargaining rights, are asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to reinstate that ruling after an appeals court reversed the lower court.

The plaintiffs filed their state Supreme Court appeal Monday. They include unions affiliated with the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters.

Act 10, one of the signature laws passed early in former Gov. Scott Walker’s two terms, ended collective bargaining rights for most state and local employees, making an exception for certain public safety employees. The law survived a series of court challenges in the years immediately after its passage.

In December 2024, however, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jacob Frost ruled  that the law made an arbitrary distinction between the public safety employees who kept their union rights under Act 10 and other public safety employees who lost those rights.

State Capitol Police, University of Wisconsin Police, and state conservation wardens were “treated unequally with no rational basis for that difference” when they were denied collective bargaining, Frost ruled, and for that reason, Act 10 violated the Wisconsin Constitution’s equal protection clause.

The law remained in place pending appeals, and more than 18 months later, the 2nd District Court of Appeals overturned Frost’s ruling in a 2-1 decision July 29.

The Legislature’s reasoning for making the distinction wasn’t an issue, so long as there are “any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification,” Judges Mark Gundrum and Shelley Grogan wrote.

Judge Lisa Neubauer dissented, arguing that the unions that kept their bargaining rights had all supported Walker’s election in 2010 just months before he took office and signed Act 10 into law. Excluding them from the law while subjecting other public safety employees to its restrictions “is not based on any identified ‘substantial distinction’ that makes the first group really different from the other,” Neubauer wrote.

The new appeal quotes Neubauer’s dissent in arguing for the justices to take up the case.

“This Court should accept review and reaffirm that, as Judge Neubauer put it in her dissent, ‘rational-basis review is not a rubber stamp,’” the unions’ motion states. “Here, because Act 10’s classification between ‘public safety’ and ‘general’ employees cannot survive anything greater than rubber-stamp-level scrutiny, that classification violates Article I, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution.”

The new appeal also challenges a finding from the appeals court majority, which found Wisconsin’s equal protection clause was identical to the federal equal protection clause and that a 2013 federal appeals court ruling had already found Act 10 constitutional.

LANSING — The demolition and rebuilding of a landmark bridge in this idyllic town along America’s greatest river has prompted convoluted detours for commuters and hurt businesses in the city’s historic Main Street district.

The Black Hawk Bridge once spanned the Mississippi River to connect Iowa and Wisconsin, acting as a lifeline for Lansing for almost a century. It became regionally iconic, featured in a pivotal scene of the 1999 David Lynch film “The Straight Story.” Now, it is being replaced with a modernized lookalike.

The bridge’s era came to an end with its closure in October 2025 and its demolition — with thousands in attendance — two months later.

Shutting down the Black Hawk Bridge cut off Lansing from a crucial river crossing. The other nearest crossings are in Marquette, Iowa (more than 27 miles south), and La Crescent, Minnesota (about 35 miles north).

Lansing Mayor Mike Verdon said residents have felt the loss of the old bridge.

“Most of the residents of Lansing are either lifelong residents, or have a family history with the town, so they’re well acquainted with the history of the old bridge,” he said. “It’s hard to say goodbye to an old friend, but everyone is anticipating the opening of the new one.”

Many older residents of Lansing lament the loss of the old bridge’s iconic design and its “singing” — a reference to the hum produced by the steel grate road surface.

“I know people that work on both sides of the river that use that bridge to commute to work,” said Clayton Burke, the Iowa Department of Transportation’s project manager for the Black Hawk Bridge. “There are people that use it to get to medical services like dental services or the clinic, and there’s the grocery store in Lansing … and people use it to get to their loved ones.”

Those hardships will continue until the new bridge is completed, expected by spring 2027.

Why the Black Hawk Bridge was demolished

DOT employees started looking into a reconstruction project in 2003, Burke said.

At the time, they considered several possibilities. The bridge could be renovated in its current state to last a couple of years more, left alone until it became functionally unusable, or demolished and rebuilt entirely.

Demolition proved to be the best option due to the litany of issues with the old bridge.

For one, according to the DOT, the old bridge was just 21 feet wide with no shoulder, and its surface was made of a steel grate instead of concrete. Its replacement will be 40 feet wide with a concrete surface and a proper shoulder.

“If you break down, you can pull over and get out of the way, or if a very wide farm implement comes through, they will have space to get through without running into other vehicles,” Burke said.

The old bridge also pushed up abruptly against the Iowa side with a tight intersection near the edge of a bluff. The new bridge significantly expands the T-intersection.

“It’ll be easier for commercial vehicles to get through and turn and safely make that passage through,” Burke said.

Additionally, the navigation channel underneath the bridge has been widened by 100 feet, making it easier for barges to negotiate the Mississippi’s main branch.

The original estimate for demolishing the old bridge and building its replacement was $140 million. The federal government was to shoulder 80%, and Iowa and Wisconsin were to split the rest. However, the La Crosse, Wisconsin, Tribune reports the cost has risen to $160 million.

Building a replacement bridge has not come without other challenges.

Naturalist Erin Cubbon at the Driftless Area Education & Visitors’ Center, an environmental museum and organization, has witnessed the decline in the town’s commerce and visitor traffic.

“We have noticed that our numbers are a little bit lower this year, but again we’re very lucky not to be affected as (much as) many of the businesses downtown,” she said.

Mayor Verdon gave this problem a more statistical framing.

“There are about 8,200 people living within a 30-mile radius of the bridge who use it regularly in both their personal and professional capacities,” he said. “It was clear from the onset that there would be a severe impact on the daily lives of each of us.”

To alleviate some of this isolation, the Iowa DOT set up a ferry service to connect Lansing to the other side of the Mississippi.

A ferry from Cassville, Wisconsin, initially served the crossing during the winter months of 2025-26. In the meantime, the contractors worked out a deal with Newt Marine Services out of Dubuque for a more permanent solution.

Newt Marine “actually built a brand-new ferry barge while Cassville was operating,” Burke said.

He applauded the team for its determination to finish an urgent project for the people of Lansing.

“They worked night shifts to get it done in time, overtime,” he said. “They put in a lot of effort and recognized that this is a critical service that we need to provide.”

The ferry can accommodate 675 to 700 vehicles per day.

When building the ferry dock, the construction firm had to consult the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to measure the impact of construction on the floodplains along the river. Modifying these landscapes too much can lead to increased risk of flooding, a major concern in a town like Lansing, where many residents live next to the Mississippi.

“Anytime you build a structure in a floodplain, the Corps gets very interested in the size of that structure and any impact it may have on future flooding in the area,” Burke said. “We don’t want to build something that will flood somebody’s house out.”

Burke said he and his team had an easy time working with the Corps and getting their necessary permits.

“We got this permit in record time so we could start building right away,” he said.

Officials also needed to address the new bridge’s effect on a local population of endangered mussels.

“There’s protected species like the Higgins eye pearly mussel,” Burke explained. “A big part of our mitigation was hiring a service to come remove those mussels and relocate them so that we weren’t taking them or destroying those mussels.”

Higgins eye pearly mussels are native to the stretch of the Mississippi between La Crosse, Wisconsin, and Muscatine, Iowa, and are federally listed as an endangered species.

Conservation also comes in the design of the bridge. The Black Hawk Bridge was a local landmark and a symbol of the area.

“Maintaining that iconic image of the bridge for the communities in the area was very important, and it is also more cost-effective than maintaining the old bridge in perpetuity,” Burke said.

Through the old bridge’s eligibility for the Historic Preservation Act, the new bridge is being built to closely resemble the old one. One part of this preservation is using older construction techniques, Burke said.

“We don’t typically build trusses on the National Highway System anymore, but in this case, we’re able to do it to mitigate the loss of that historic structure,” he said.

Truss bridges have fallen out of favor for modern bridge construction due to changes in styles, high maintenance levels and a labor-intensive construction process, among other reasons.

More construction headaches lie ahead

The new bridge’s completion will not be the end of Lansing’s reconstruction. The town’s 1.32-mile Main Street is expected to be rehabilitated in 2028.

According to documents from the Regional Planning Commission, reconstructing the road will address concerns such as traffic safety, walkability, accessibility, environmental impacts, historic preservation, lighting and streetscape amenities.

Local Realtor Jack Sweeney was apprehensive about the timing of this second project for such a small town.

“If the DOT is going to come in and tear the street out, it’s too bad they couldn’t have done that at the same time and then the hurt would have been all at once,” he said about the bridge closure’s timing. “I feel sorry for those people down there in Lansing that are in business.”

Jackie Cooper is the executive director of Main Street Lansing, an organization whose mission is to enhance and support the historic district of Main Street.

As a result of the bridge’s closure, Main Street Lansing has stepped in to provide more community events to encourage people to stay in town. New events include the monthly “Cocktails & Connections” social and the inaugural Lansing Liberty Motorcycle Rally, which brought over 150 riders to town.

Additionally, many local businesses have hosted more events themselves, including live music and themed nights. These serve the important function of community continuity.

“While the bridge closure has presented real economic challenges, it has also highlighted just how committed Lansing is to supporting one another and adapting through difficult circumstances,” Cooper said.

This mission will become all the more important when the main avenue to get to the various businesses on Main Street will be shut off.

“Our focus will be on helping keep business owners, residents, and visitors informed with timely and accurate communication,” Cooper said. “This could include guidance on customer communication, business continuity planning, marketing strategies, signage, and ‘We’re Still Open’ campaigns to encourage people to continue shopping and dining downtown during construction.”

“Ultimately, we see this as an investment in Lansing’s future,” she said. “While construction will undoubtedly bring challenges, it’s also an opportunity to create a stronger, more vibrant downtown that will serve our businesses, residents and visitors for generations to come.”

A live webcam of the bridge construction is available here.

U.S. employers shed 23,000 jobs in July, and the employment count for earlier months was revised downward by 103,000 jobs as labor shortages begin to weigh on hiring, according to new statistics released Friday by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“There’s no sugarcoating the overarching message in the July jobs report,” Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, wrote in a social media post. “The economy is struggling. Job growth is at a virtual standstill.”

Inflation could be taking a toll as employment in general merchandise retailing declined by 21,000 jobs and gas stations cut 5,000 jobs.  Employment in finance also dropped by 14,000, continuing a slide of 121,000 jobs since a recent peak in May 2025.

The number of health care jobs grew by 22,000 in July, but that was lower than the monthly average gain of 36,000 in the past  year.

The federal government also revised the job numbers for May and June, subtracting 66,000 from the May total and 37,000 from June, even though the World Cup boosted employment during those months.  The adjusted job growth numbers for May and June are 63,000 and 20,000, respectively.

Small businesses saw “a surprising and substantial tightening of the labor market” in July, according to a report from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), which represents  300,000 small and independent business owners. In a survey, 27% of members cited labor supply and quality as their single most important problem, up from 19% in June and the 12% historical average.

The cost of health insurance also stood out as a top concern in a separate NFIB report. That was especially true in Texas, one of 10 states that has not  expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to provide coverage for a broader population of lower-income people. In Texas, almost 15% of NFIB members said health insurance costs were their single most important problem, the highest of any state, compared to about 10% nationally.

“I have yet to have a conversation with anyone who doesn’t think this is a problem and in most cases it’s their biggest problem,” NFIB State Director Jeff Burdett said.

Nationally, most small businesses can’t afford to provide health insurance at all, according to NFIB surveys, he said.

“They want to provide health insurance, they need to provide it to be competitive, it’s just cost prohibitive,” Burdett said. “What that means is that talented workers are bypassing small businesses entirely in favor of large employers.”

Another recent employment report from ADP, a payroll processor, also pointed to a sudden tightening of the labor market: The pay for job changers rose at the fastest pace in a year.

“Job changers are highly sensitive to real-time economic conditions, and their rapid pay growth implies supply constraints in parts of the labor market,” Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist, said in a statement.

This story has been updated to clarify the source of a survey about health insurance costs from the National Federation of Independent Business. Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

CHICAGO — A bipartisan group of state lawmakers is calling for an overhaul of the nation’s childcare system, which they say is failing children, parents and providers. 

The group of 13 Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who have spent the last year studying childcare access and affordability problems, offered an array of policy recommendations during the National Conference of State Legislatures annual summit in Chicago this week.

During a panel discussion Monday, lawmakers underscored the persisting challenge with childcare that costs families too much and pays providers too little. That has led to vast access gaps in many parts of the country as demand for childcare far outstrips supply.  

“Every state is experiencing a childcare crisis,” said Jenna Bannon, associate director in the Children and Families Program of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In its 33-page report laying out causes and potential solutions to childcare shortages, the lawmakers’ policy group  called for more private sector employer participation, higher pay for childcare providers and a reconsideration of childcare regulations that may be outdated.

“The childcare system is at a crossroads,” the report says, “and decisions made now will shape how well systems meet the needs of families and economies in the years ahead.”

Many of the policy prescriptions inherently cost money. But Maryland state Del. Aletheia McCaskill said states can’t go it alone. McCaskill, a Democrat and a childcare provider, said the issue requires investment from outside sources, including philanthropic organizations and businesses. 

“It’s going to take more than just taxes,” she told Stateline. “It’s going to take real investment by other folks. We have to do this with everybody playing their part. The government, absolutely, but we can’t do it all.”

During the presentation, McCaskill urged other lawmakers to reframe childcare discussions in economic terms.

“When you talk about childcare, you can’t talk about children. Imagine that,” she said. “You have to talk about the economy, pockets and how all this works together.”

South Dakota state Sen. Tim Reed, a Republican, said businesses are increasingly interested in assuring their employees have access to childcare. 

Reed was previously the mayor of Brookings, the state’s fourth most populous city. Before the pandemic, he said, businesses reported workforce challenges as their biggest constraint. And the lack of workers, they said, was directly linked to a lack of accessible childcare.

Reed pointed to a local bank that provided childcare for the children —- and even grandchildren —- of employees years before it became a prominent issue across the country.

“And you know what? They’re the first place that people want to work because they have childcare,” Reed said during Monday’s panel. “Once you get businesses involved in this — because they do understand the economic realities of it — that’s when you can become successful.”

In 38 states, the costs of childcare outpaces the average cost of in-state college tuition, according to Child Care Aware of America, a nonprofit advocacy group. For 2025, that organization calculated an average annual cost of childcare of about $13,000, with average prices of infant care surpassing $15,000. Those costs vary widely by state, though, with center-based infant care ranging from $6,492 a year in Mississippi to $27,067 a year in Massachusetts. 

Monday’s discussion often turned to New Mexico, where Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham last year announced the nation’s first free universal childcare system, funded by state investment earnings from oil and gas revenues. 

New Mexico state Sen. Linda Trujillo, a Democrat, said during the discussion that the new universal system doesn’t yet guarantee universal access. In her community of Santa Fe, for example, she said the city lacks about 1,200 spaces for infants to 5-year-olds. 

Several lawmakers noted the changing federal environment, which has raised funding questions about many social service programs, including healthcare and food assistance. 

Bannon, of NCSL, said the states are now leading the charge on childcare as Democratic and Republican state lawmakers increasingly explore new legislation to childcare access.

‘“Historically, the federal government played a really big role, and the states really kind of looked to the feds to guide them,” she told Stateline. “And I think now there’s been kind of a role reversal and states are stepping more into the space, and the feds are watching them to see what they do.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

In a 2-1 decision, Wisconsin’s 2nd District Court of Appeals overturned a previous Dane County Circuit Court ruling that found Act 10, the controversial 2011 law that severely restricted the collective bargaining rights of most public employees, unconstitutional. 

In late 2024, Dane County Judge Jacob Frost ruled that the law violates the state constitution’s equal protections clause because it made some public safety workers exempt from the law’s limits on unions while excluding other workers with similar jobs from those protections.

In their majority decision, conservative Judges Mark Gundrum and Shelley Grogan said that it’s not up to the courts to weigh in on the merits of the Legislature’s reasoning for making the distinction, only to determine “any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.”

The decision argues that the Legislature excluded enough public safety employees to be able to maintain public safety and emergency services if in the wake of Act 10’s passage, every public employee union in the state, including the excluded groups, went on an illegal strike.

“Under these standards, we can easily locate a reason for the choices the Legislature made,” the majority decision, written by Gundrum, states. “We can conceive of facts for the public safety distinctions, and we can hypothesize a sound reason for why some public safety employees were not included in Act 10’s public safety group.  Namely, the groups included in the public safety group were the minimum number of groups the Legislature deemed essential to perform public safety-related services, and it selected employees it determined were necessary to maintain public safety in the event of labor unrest.”

In a dissent, Judge Lisa Neubauer noted that the unions allowed to maintain their bargaining rights had all supported the campaign of former Gov. Scott Walker just months before he was elected and signed Act 10 into law. 

She argued that the interpretation of the state’s equal protections clause requires that the Legislature’s reasoning be “rational” and that financial savings aren’t enough, writing that the Legislature’s reasoning doesn’t make sense because of the similarities among public safety employees across both groups. 

“The inclusion of some employees engaged in public safety in the protected category, and exclusion of others, is not based on any identified ‘substantial distinction’ that makes the first group really different from the other,” Neubauer writes. “The lack of a substantial distinction is obvious, and it is alone fatal to the Legislature’s position. It is an analysis that the majority fails to address altogether. To pass constitutional muster, there must be something inherently different between the two groups whose members are all engaged in public safety — active law enforcement, fire suppression and prevention, and emergency services — dangerous jobs that require a high degree of conditioning.  Employees who perform the same types of services and are putting themselves in harm’s way are being treated dramatically differently under the law.”

She adds that the “pinch-hit hypothesis” put forth by the Legislature in the appeal that it excluded enough employees to maintain public safety in the event of a mass strike that didn’t happen “is preposterous.”

That is particularly true, she wrote, because the state Capitol Police were excluded. 

“Aside from the failure of the Legislature’s attempts to distinguish these occupations, the inclusion of state motor vehicle inspectors and exclusion of Capitol police is clearly not germane to the purpose of ensuring public safety during a mass illegal labor strike — the Capitol police are the law enforcement officers statutorily responsible for ensuring the continuity of government and protecting legislative and executive officials, justices and judges, and state employees,” she wrote. “Moreover, any mass labor unrest would undoubtedly take place in Madison, and yet the Capitol and university police are excluded, while state motor vehicle inspectors are included. If public safety is the stated purpose, it would be irrational to exclude the very law enforcement officials we would need to protect our elected officials in the event of mass labor unrest.”

Candidates for governor react

The Court’s decision Wednesday rippled through the state’s gubernatorial race as the Democrats running in the crowded primary, who have all promised to repeal Act 10 if elected, weighed in. 

Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes said the ruling was a reminder that “Wisconsin’s workers live in a broken system.” 

“Wisconsin workers are being failed by the status quo. Our fight continues until every worker in every community across Wisconsin has the rights they deserve,” he wrote on social media. 

Former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan said the ruling was a “setback” but that the “fight isn’t over.” 

“Scott Walker spent years tearing down workers’ rights in this state, and Wisconsin families have been paying for it ever since,” Brennan said. “I know how to clean up Scott Walker’s messes because I’ve done it. When Gov. [Tony] Evers asked me to help fix the damage that Walker left behind, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work — and we created the largest budget surplus in state history. I’ll do it again as governor. I will repeal Act 10, restore collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin’s workers, and make sure the people who show up every day to teach our kids and serve our communities finally have a voice again.”

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said the decision “was not unexpected” but a reminder of the long wait since working families in the state had their rights “ripped away” by Act 10. 

“Wisconsin teachers, nurses, sanitation workers, and public servants deserve the right to collectively bargain for fair pay, safe workplaces, and a voice on the job,” he said. “We must continue fighting to restore collective bargaining rights for every public employee in every corner of our state.

State Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), the frontrunner in the Democratic primary, said Wednesday’s ruling was a “painful reminder of what this disastrous law” has done to Wisconsin workers. 

“The court itself describes a rationale of putting as many public employees as possible into the category stripped of meaningful collective bargaining rights in order to achieve budget savings,” she said. “For 15 years, Wisconsin’s teachers, nurses, correctional officers and other hardworking public servants have lived with the consequences of Scott Walker’s attack on organized labor. Workers are the backbone of this state, and they deserve better than being treated like a line item.”

State Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said the state is “better off when workers have a say in their workplaces.” 

“Act 10 was an assault on all of our rights and our economy, engineered by Scott Walker with the help of Tom Tiffany, to disempower working people and weaken public schools,” Roys said. “The courts should restore every workers’ right to organize and collectively bargain, and the legislature should act to protect those rights in perpetuity. As Governor, I will continue to champion people over the powerful and will work with the legislature to rebuild the infrastructure for public sector bargaining.

Wisconsin Supreme Court up next 

The Wisconsin Education Association Council, which is part of the group of unions who brought the initial lawsuit, said after the ruling Wednesday morning that the group remains “confident in the merits of our case” and that they’re “considering all options available.” 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is weeks away from the investiture of Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor as its newest member. Taylor joining the Court gives liberals a 5-2 majority on the panel. However, Justice Brian Hagedorn has already recused himself from previous procedural decisions involving this case because he served as Walker’s legal counsel and played a major role in writing Act 10. 

If the Supreme Court were to take up the case, it’s likely a final decision wouldn’t be reached until after November’s elections and the inauguration of a new governor and start of a new legislative session in January. With Democrats hopeful they’ll be able to win trifecta control of state government, the actions of the other two branches of government could render the lawsuit moot. 

In a concurrence to the majority decision, Grogan argued the courts should be careful about weighing in on political issues such as Act 10. 

“A law’s constitutionality does not ebb and flow with a court’s composition, and the judicial branch must not be used to advance political agendas on either side of the political spectrum,” she wrote. “However, in seeking to unwind legislation that both the federal court and the Wisconsin Supreme Court have upheld as constitutional for over a decade, this lawsuit seeks to do exactly that.  At this juncture, if the People want to overturn these decisions, they must do so through the legislative branch, which, unlike the judicial branch, is necessarily political.”

Since President Donald Trump has gutted much of the federal government’s consumer protection work, state attorneys general are increasingly left to fight high prices and investigate businesses themselves.

Consumer protection work, long a growing focus of state AGs from both parties, has ramped up considerably more in the past two years, legal experts say. The change follows Trump’s dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency created by Congress in the wake of the Great Recession. And persisting concerns about the high prices of housing, groceries and fuel has made affordability a top political concern for many AGs.

After Trump took office last year, the bureau became an early target of billionaire Elon Musk’s short-lived Department of Government Efficiency. Since then, it has dropped dozens of investigations and enforcement cases, moved to slash the agency workforce and made it harder for consumers to submit complaints.

The Trump administration also has sought to limit the authority granted to states to enforce financial services protections under the federal legislation that launched the CFPB. 

Now, Republican and Democratic attorneys general are increasingly teaming up to use state laws and enforce federal laws to go after alleged antitrust violations, deceptive marketing practices and price gouging, as many Americans grow weary of high prices.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, president of the bipartisan National Association of Attorneys General, said states are increasingly working to fill the void left by the federal government.

“We do a ton of work in trying to pick up the pieces,” said Tong, a Democrat.

Last year, Tong launched a national affordability campaign aimed at using state laws to drive down consumer costs. While sometimes prices go up simply because of general inflation, he said, states have the power to tackle affordability by targeting unfair and deceptive business practices.

“It’s probably less complicated than people think,” he said. “If it looks unfair, if it seems unfair, it probably is unfair.”

Experts note that state AGs cannot fully replace the breadth of work once undertaken by the federal government. And the growing interest in large, multistate cases can divert attorneys general office resources from other pressing local consumer matters, they add. 

Still, big businesses have taken note of the changing landscape: Once considered secondary enforcers of consumer protections, states are increasingly defining the rules around pricing transparency, subscription service fees and algorithmic pricing. That decentralization means businesses can face quickly evolving, different or even contradictory rules in different states.

“It means enforcement is moving closer to home,” said Ashley Taylor, a partner at law firm Troutman Pepper Locke. His work includes helping clients with compliance issues, government investigations and enforcement efforts brought by state AGs. Though states are working less with the federal government, he said, companies haven’t seen a drop in regulation — instead, they face the prospect of highly coordinated state investigations and lawsuits. 

Democratic and Republican attorneys general have hired former CFPB employees, expanded their consumer protection staff and budgets for outside counsel,and increasingly specialize in different areas of business law. Indiana and Illinois, for example, have built a reputation for investigating data breaches and privacy issues, Taylor said. 

The consumer work of AGs stands in stark contrast to their splashy partisan work that often garners headlines. Republicans, for example, often sued Democratic President Joe Biden over environmental, labor and gun policies. And Democratic AGs have filed over 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration, challenging federal funding cuts, immigration enforcement efforts and tariffs on foreign goods.  

“That’s a whole different world,” Taylor said. “If you’re in business, if you have a consumer protection concern, an antitrust concern, or privacy concern, it’s nonpartisan, completely nonpartisan.”

Bipartisan state enforcement

Tong said not having a federal partner makes it harder for his office to do all the work it wants, but he said he’s not ignoring any consumer complaints. “You probably don’t get to it as fast as you want or as completely as you want.”

As one example, he pointed to an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, which owns hundreds of concert venues, a promotion business and Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticket-selling platform. The Biden administration started that investigation, but the Trump administration and six Republican-led states dropped the effort, with a surprise $280 million settlement reached in the first days of the trial. 

Still, 33 states and Washington, D.C., continued with the trial, ultimately convincing a federal jury that Ticketmaster operated as a monopoly and harmed consumers. In the second phase of the trial, the court will now weigh financial penalties and potentially force the company to break apart.

States — including Ohio — win monopoly suit against Live Nation, Ticketmaster

“After the federal government abandoned us, Democrats and Republicans hung in there and we got a guilty verdict against Live Nation/Ticketmaster for illegally using their monopoly to rip us all off,” Tong said. 

Following the April verdict, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach was among the Republicans celebrating the decision. A staunch Trump supporter, Kobach said he refused to accept the federal government’s “weak settlement.”

In a similar bipartisan effort, 46 states recently won a $45 million with Block Inc., the owner of peer-to-peer payment service CashApp. States alleged that the company illegally misled consumers about the safety of its app and failed to protect users from fraud, though the firm did not admit to wrongdoing in the settlement.

Tong said states pursued the case because of lax oversight from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which under the Biden administration ordered the firm to pay $175 million for failing to protect users.

“States have a lot of authority. They’re doing what they can to fill the gaps, but the hole left by the gutting of the CFPB is impossible to entirely fill,” said Amanda Fischer, policy director and chief operating officer at Better Markets, a nonprofit consumer and investor watchdog group. 

Since its inception, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau helped more than 200 million Americans recoup over $21 billion from financial services companies. That included restitution for improper junk fees, deceptive lending and the highly publicized banking scandal at Wells Fargo revolving around mortgages, auto loans and checking accounts.

Fischer said the agency has now undertaken a “reverse-Robin Hood campaign,” using its might to enrich financial and tech firms instead of consumers. 

State AGs can’t fully focus on replacing CFPB’s actions, since they must also devote resources to criminal and civil state court cases and local business complaints. And Democratic AGs are devoting time and money to ongoing legal battles to keep the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau funded. 

“So they have to spend resources to even have an operational bureau, let alone pick up the work that they’re not doing.”

The CFPB did not respond to Stateline’s request for comment.  

Earlier this month, acting CFPB Director Russell Vought told a U.S. Senate committee that the agency had been “weaponized” under the past administration. He said overregulation had stifled innovation, reduced consumer choice and increased prices. 

Focus on affordability 

While states have worked on consumer issues for years, legal experts have noticed a heightened focus on affordability efforts from state AGs of both parties.

Republican attorneys general in Indiana and Georgia recently warned retailers against pocketing the savings from temporary suspensions of their state gas taxes. 

Neither office responded to requests for comment. In May, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said complaints to his office resulted in 30 formal price gouging investigations as well as informal inquiries into price fluctuations at another 100 gas stations.

His office created an online dashboard tracking live gas prices across more than 4,600 Indiana gas stations. 

“We know every penny matters right now and are committed to making sure you are treated fairly at the pump during this time,” Rokita said in an April news release. 

In Texas, the Republican AG is cooperating with the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether meatpackers are driving up beef prices. And Washington state’s Democratic AG is suing a grocery chain over allegedly overcharging customers through deceptive Buy One Get One Free promotions.

Darwin Roberts, a lawyer at the Morgan Lewis firm and a previous deputy attorney general in Washington state, said many of those issues have long been in the wheelhouse of AG offices. They’re just being framed differently in the era of inflation. 

“They’d be doing this work,” he said. “But the fact that it dovetails so closely with this issue that’s becoming really politically important causes them to emphasize it.”

Roberts said state laws banning deceptive or unfair trade practices are purposefully broad, allowing attorneys general to challenge evolving business practices or emerging markets. 

For businesses, the changing regulatory landscape presents new challenges. Companies must navigate a landscape of varying individual state regulations or investigations, the possibility of lawsuits from coalitions of multiple states and potential federal enforcement.

“It can be a difficult environment for businesses,” Roberts said, “because they’re facing a range of regulators looking at them.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

A federal commission voted Tuesday in favor of a Trump administration proposal to rescind requirements that larger employers report the demographics of their workers — information that’s used to help enforce racial and gender antidiscrimination laws.

Most employers with 100 or more workers have been required to submit data annually on staff sex, race and ethnicity since 1966 to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Earlier this summer, the administration submitted a proposed rule that would eliminate that reporting requirement for companies as well as for state and local governments. 

The EEOC contends that demographics reporting requirements place an “impermissible focus on ‘minorities’ and women.” The commission argues the forms “may encourage employers to discriminate against employees who are not considered ‘minorities.’” The proposed rule will be posted to the Federal Register for a public comment period of 30 days, and a public hearing will be held Aug. 11, with requests to testify due Aug. 7.

Bloomberg Law reported that the commission voted 2-1 along party lines to advance the plan.  

Since President Donald Trump took office, the administration has been focused on eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The new proposal, if finalized, would roll back federal oversight and limit employer transparency, experts say. 

If the federal requirements end, states might step in to create their own requirements, said Alexandra Garrison Barnett, a partner at the law firm Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia.

“We might see more states imposing those kinds of requirements in the absence of a federal requirement, or we could see states banning or prohibiting employers from collecting (demographic information),” said Barnett, a labor and employment attorney who helps employers evaluate their DEI policies and strategies.

A handful of states already have requirements that employers collect and report on workplace demographic information, she noted. 

The commission’s vote comes on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day. Tuesday marks how far into the year Black women must work to equal the average pay earned by a white man by the end of the previous year.

The lack of demographic data will hinder accountability for employers, said labor economist Valerie Rawlston Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy.

“(The proposal) is consistent with the general anti-equity push of this administration to eliminate pretty much all of the infrastructure that have been in place for equal employment in this country,” Wilson said. “We have laws in place that prohibit discrimination, but the effectiveness of those laws is really dependent on our ability to enforce those laws. And the enforcement of those laws is facilitated by having consistent reliable data.”

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research reports that Black women make 64 cents for every dollar paid to white men — across all education levels and positions, including leadership positions. 

Broken down by state, the gap widens: In Idaho, for example, Black women make 36 cents for every dollar white men make, across all workers with earnings.

The rule, Wilson said, would “severely hinder the ability of the EEOC to carry out its enforcement responsibilities.”

Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanen@stateline.org.

The union election of nurses at St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison was certified Wednesday after a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board overruled the objections of the hospital’s parent company, SSM Health. 

On June 11, nurses at the hospital voted 89% to form a union. It was the largest representation election in Wisconsin in at least a quarter century. The nursing staff at St. Mary’s previously told the Wisconsin Examiner that they were seeking to form a union over concerns about procedures, staffing and compensation and a lack of responsiveness from hospital management. 

The St. Louis-based SSM Health had objected to the election, arguing that charge nurses at the hospital should not be allowed to vote or join the union because they hold a supervisory role. At the nearby Meriter Hospital in Madison, charge nurses are part of the union. 

The company had filed its objections about the charge nurses prior to the election but the NLRB had decided to delay ruling on the question and the charges nurses were allowed to vote but their ballots were kept separate. 

The hospital system’s objections included claims that the delayed decision affected the election results, that charge nurses engaged in pro-union electioneering, that the union caused disruptions to the hospital’s human resources staff, that a pro-union staffer brought cookies to the voting area and that union supporters tried to enter the voting area. 

Jennifer Hadsall, the director of the NLRB region that includes Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and parts of Iowa, wrote in her ruling that for most of the objections, the system did not include proof of the complaint or that the activity affected the election results. 

“I have concluded, for the reasons set forth in this decision, that the offer of proof produced by the Employer is not sufficient to meet its burden of showing that the proffered evidence would be grounds for setting aside the election if introduced and credited at a hearing,” Hadsall wrote.

While the election was certified, the board has still not ruled on the question of charge nurses joining the union. 

After the ruling, nurses at the hospital celebrated the decision and urged hospital management to stop working to prevent the unionization and instead start bargaining. 

“The Labor Board has spoken, our community has spoken, elected leaders have spoken, St. Mary’s nurses have spoken, and we have resoundingly declared that it’s time for SSM to respect our union vote so we can start working on solutions for our patients,” Zach Zahalka, a nurse in the hospital’s cardiac catheterization lab, said in a statement. “As nurses, this work is a calling, and our primary role is to be our patients’ advocates. Forming our union is an extension of that patient advocacy, and we urgently have to solve the crisis of understaffing and loss of experienced nurses at St. Mary’s.”

“SSM needs to stop trying to undermine our union,” he added, “and instead focus all their resources on engaging with us productively so that together we can create real solutions for better staffing and retention to provide the best care.”

Lisa Adams, a spokesperson for the hospital, said in a statement that the hospital is reviewing the decision. 

“SSM Health respects the federal labor law process. We have received the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) staff decision and are reviewing it,” she said.

The Trump administration is continuing its pushback against state artificial intelligence laws that it views as ideologically biased, proposing a new Federal Trade Commission policy.

The proposed policy statement, which is open for public comment through July 31, would affect how the FTC regulates AI companies. The agency said it’s meant to address concerns that “AI companies that distort their systems’ outputs to achieve undisclosed ideological objectives” could be deceiving consumers in violation of federal law.

“The FTC wants to hear from businesses and consumers about their experiences and concerns regarding the subversion of AI systems for ideological ends,” Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said in a statement.

The proposal specifically mentions a first-of-its-kind Colorado law that had banned “algorithmic discrimination,” or AI output that might lead to decisions disfavoring people on jobs, loans or healthcare based on their race, religion, gender and other protected categories. But the Colorado legislature already has repealed that provision. The revamped law instead focuses on regulating technology that results in “consequential decisions” for consumers. 

The controversial law prompted a lawsuit from xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, which the U.S. Department of Justice supported.

In December 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order targeting state AI laws, including creation of a Department of Justice AI Litigation Task Force to challenge state AI laws. His order also directed the FTC to issue a policy statement on regulation of state laws that “require alterations to the truthful outputs of AI models.” 

Stateline asked the FTC if there were any state and city laws that officials felt were currently in violation of federal laws, but received no response.

Tyler Thompson, a Denver-based lawyer with firm Reed Smith who tracks emerging technology law, said the FTC proposal is important because it raises the possibility that companies could face deceptive-practices claims based on how they tune, weight or steer AI models, which could also prompt state policy on the issue.

“Just the fact that companies could be tweaking their models and that could lead to a deceptive trade practice, I think is huge news,” Thompson said.

Thompson believes the legal battle and the FTC’s focus on restricting similar laws will lead to “a more niche” policy focus on AI – such as deepfakes, nonconsensual sexual content, children’s safety, companion chatbots and data centers — areas where there is bipartisan agreement.

Noah M. Kenney, founder and principal consultant of Digital 520, an AI governance, security and privacy consultancy, who also responded to the FTC’s request for public comment, said the proposed statement carries more political pressure rather than being an enforceable federal regulation.

“The real effect of this statement is signaling and pressure, not legal preemption, especially paired with the December executive order’s AI litigation task force.”

Kenney said there is also an irony in the federal government’s argument.

“A federal effort to dictate what counts as a ‘neutral’ or ‘accurate’ output raises its own First Amendment concerns about compelled speech,” he said.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.