Amicus Curiae Brief — Donald J. Trump, Petitioner v. United States

Supreme Court briefMar 19, 2024

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No. 23-939

In the Supreme Court of the United States

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

DONALD J. TRUMP,

Petitioner,

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

ON PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE STATES OF

OHIO, ALASKA, AND WYOMING IN SUPPORT

OF PETITIONER

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

DAVE YOST*

Ohio Attorney General

*Counsel of Record

MICHAEL J. HENDERSHOT

Ohio Chief Deputy Solicitor General

30 E. Broad St., 17th Fl.

Columbus, Ohio 43215

614-466-8980

Dave.yost@ohioago.gov

Counsel for Amicus Curiae State of Ohio

(additional counsel listed at the end of the brief)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ..................................... iii

STATEMENT OF AMICI INTEREST ....................... 1

INTRODUCTION ....................................................... 1

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT .................................... 3

ARGUMENT ............................................................... 6

The Constitution’s structure and history

demand broad, but not limitless

presidential immunity. ............................... 6

II.

The test defining the limits of

presidential immunity should be a factintense set of standards, not a brightline set of rules. ......................................... 12

The many contexts in which

presidential immunity may arise call

for standards, not rules. ...................... 12

As in other areas of law, bright-line

rules for presidential immunity risk

either too much permission or too

much deterrence. ................................. 14

III.

The standards for setting the extent of

presidential immunity should account

for the charged act’s nexus to Article II

power and the urgency of the act

charged as crime. ...................................... 17

The test for the scope of presidential

immunity must account for the

nexus between the charged act and

core Article II power. ........................... 18

The test for whether an act lies

beyond the scope of presidential

immunity must account for the

urgency of the act charged as a

crime. ................................................... 22

The

two-factor

standard

for

presidential immunity could operate

much like this Court’s approach to

qualified immunity. ............................. 23

CONCLUSION.......................................................... 27

iii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Cases

Page(s)

Abrams v. United States,

250 U.S. 616 (1919) ............................................ 21

Ala. Ass’n of Realtors v. Dep’t of Health & Hum.

Servs.,

141 S. Ct. 2485 (2021) ........................................ 23

Alden v. Maine,

527 U.S. 706 (1999) ............................................ 14

Allen v. Cooper,

589 U.S. 248 (2020) ............................................ 14

Anderson v. Creighton,

483 U.S. 635 (1987) ............................................ 17

Andy Warhol Found. for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith,

598 U.S. 508 (2023) ............................................ 16

Ariz. State Legis. v. Ariz. Indep. Redistricting

Comm’n,

576 U.S. 787 (2015) .............................................. 2

Ark. Game & Fish Comm’n v. United States,

568 U.S. 23 (2012) .............................................. 13

Bailey v. Swindell,

89 F.4th 1324 (11th Cir. 2024) .......................... 25

Baker v. Carr,

369 U.S. 186 (1962) ...................................... 20, 21

Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.,

510 U.S. 569 (1994) ........................................ 4, 16

City of Escondido v. Emmons,

139 S. Ct. 500 (2019) .......................................... 24

Clinton v. Jones,

520 U.S. 681 (1997) ..................................... 8-9, 26

Cullen v. Pinholster,

563 U.S. 170 (2011) ............................................ 13

eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C.,

547 U.S. 388 (2006) ...................................... 14, 26

Filarsky v. Delia,

566 U.S. 377 (2012) .............................................. 8

Florida v. Harris,

568 U.S. 237 (2013) ........................................ 4, 13

Gonzalez v. Trevino,

60 F.4th 906 (5th Cir. 2023) ................................ 9

Google LLC v. Oracle Am., Inc.,

141 S. Ct. 1183 (2021) ........................................ 16

Great Atl. & Pac. Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equip.

Corp.,

340 U.S. 147 (1950) ............................................ 15

Haaland v. Brackeen,

599 U.S. 255 (2023) ......................................... 9-10

Holland v. Florida,

560 U.S. 631 (2010) ............................................ 11

Holmberg v. Armbrecht,

327 U.S. 392 (1946) ............................................ 13

Illinois v. Gates,

462 U.S. 213 (1983) ............................................ 13

KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc.,

550 U.S. 398 (2007) ............................................ 15

Lombardo v. City of St. Louis, Missouri,

143 S. Ct. 2419 (2023) ........................................ 24

Luther v. Borden,

48 U.S. 1 (1849) .................................................. 21

Malley v. Briggs,

475 U.S. 335 (1986) ............................................ 17

McCulloch v. Maryland,

17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316 (1819) ............................ 10

Minor v. Happersett,

88 U.S. 162 (1874) .............................................. 21

Miss. v. Johnson,

71 U.S. 475 (1867) .............................................. 23

Mitchell v. United States,

526 U.S. 314 (1999) ............................................ 10

Myers v. United States,

272 U.S. 52 (1926) ................................................ 9

N.Y. Tr. Co. v. Eisner,

256 U.S. 345 (1921) ............................................ 26

New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann,

285 U.S. 262 (1932) ........................................... 2-3

Nieves v. Bartlett,

139 S. Ct. 1715 (2019) .......................................... 9

Nixon v. Adm’r of Gen. Servs.,

433 U.S. 425 (1977) ............................................ 10

Nixon v. Fitzgerald,

457 U.S. 731 (1982) .................................... 6, 8, 22

N.L.R.B. v. Noel Canning,

573 U.S. 513 (2014) ............................................ 23

Pearson v. Callahan,

555 U.S. 223 (2009) ............................................ 24

Pleasant Grove City v. Summum,

555 U.S. 460 (2009) ............................................ 21

Powell v. McCormack,

395 U.S. 486 (1969) ............................................ 23

Printz v. United States,

521 U.S. 898 (1997) .............................................. 7

Puckett v. United States,

556 U.S. 129 (2009) ............................................ 14

Ray v. Roane,

948 F.3d 222 (4th Cir. 2020) .............................. 25

Richardson v. McKnight,

521 U.S. 399 (1997) .............................................. 8

Sabir v. Williams,

52 F.4th 51 (2d Cir. 2022) .................................. 25

Saucier v. Katz,

533 U.S. 194 (2001) ............................................ 24

Sause v. Bauer,

585 U.S. 957 (2018) ............................................ 24

Seila Law L.L.C. v. Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau,

140 S. Ct. 2183 (2020) ........................................ 19

vii

Shurtleff v. City of Bos.,

596 U.S. 243 (2022) ............................................ 22

Strickland v. Washington,

466 U.S. 668 (1984) ...................................... 13, 17

Swidler & Berlin v. United States,

524 U.S. 399 (1998) ............................................ 10

Taylor v. City of Milford,

10 F.4th 800 (7th Cir. 2021) ........................ 24, 25

Taylor v. Riojas,

592 U.S. 7 (2020) ................................................ 24

Tex. Indus. v. Radcliff Materials,

451 U.S. 630 (1981) ............................................ 16

Trump v. Anderson,

No. 23-719, 2024 WL 899207 (U.S. Mar. 4,

2024) ..................................................................... 2

Trump v. Hawaii,

585 U.S. 667 (2018) ............................................ 10

Trump v. Mazars USA, L.L.P.,

591 U.S. 848 (2020) ........................................ 6, 26

Trump v. Thompson,

142 S. Ct. 680 (2022) .......................................... 10

Trump v. Vance,

140 S. Ct. 2412 (2020) ........................ 6, 7, 8, 9, 11

U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton,

514 U.S. 779 (1995) ............................................ 10

United States v. Alvarez,

567 U.S. 709 (2012) ............................................ 21

viii

United States v. Curtiss-Wright Exp. Corp.,

299 U.S. 304 (1936) ............................................ 19

United States v. Johnson,

383 U.S. 169 (1966) .............................................. 7

United States v. Lee,

106 U.S. 196 (1882) ............................................ 11

United States v. Nixon,

418 U.S. 683 (1974) .................................... 8, 9, 11

United States v. Young,

470 U.S. 1 (1985) ................................................ 13

W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette,

319 U.S. 624 (1943) .............................................. 1

Walker v. Tex. Div., Sons of Confederate Veterans,

Inc.,

576 U.S. 200 (2015) ....................................... 21-22

Ex parte Wells,

59 U.S. 307 (1856) .............................................. 23

Wilkinson v. Austin,

545 U.S. 209 (2005) ............................................ 13

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer,

343 U.S. 579 (1952) ........................................ 7, 18

Zivotofsky v. Clinton,

566 U.S. 189 (2012) ............................................ 20

Zivotofsky v. Kerry,

576 U.S. 1 (2015) ................................................ 19

Constitutional Provisions

U.S. Const. art. I, § 6 ............................................. 7-8

Other

A. Weisbach, Formalism in the Tax Law, 66 U. Chi.

L. Rev. 860 (1999) .............................................. 15

Akhil Reed Amar & Neal Kumar Katyal, Executive

Privileges and Immunities: The Nixon and Clinton Cases, 108 Harv. L. Rev. 701 (1995) ........... 22

Antonin Scalia, The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules,

56 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1175 (1989) .................... 12, 13

Exec. Order No. 2729A (June 15, 1917) ................. 22

Exec. Order No. 9215, 7 Fed. Reg. 5205-07, Authorizing and Directing the Secretary of War to Assume

Full Control of Certain Airports (Aug. 8, 1942)

........................................................................ 22-23

Frank H. Easterbrook & Daniel R. Fischel, Limited

Liability and the Corporation, 52 U. Chi. L. Rev.

89 (1985) .............................................................. 1

H. Comm. on the Judiciary, Impeachment of Richard

M. Nixon, President of the United States, H.R.

Rep. No. 93-1305 (Aug. 20, 1974) ...................... 20

John Henry Wigmore, Evidence in Trials at Common

Law §1367 (J. Chadbourn ed. 1974) ................. 25

Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of

the United States §156 (1833) ............................. 8

Liz Essley Whyte, The Lincoln Bedroom is Still Paying Dividends, Slate (Oct. 26, 2015, 12:08 PM) 19

Meilan Solly, When President Ulysses S. Grant Was

Arrested for Speeding in a Horse-Drawn Carriage,

Smithsonian Magazine (March 31, 2023) ......... 19

Only Policeman Who Ever Arrested a President, The

Sunday Star (Sept. 27, 1908) ............................ 19

STATEMENT OF AMICI INTEREST

The amici States value their role “as laboratories

for devising solutions to difficult legal problems.” Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Indep. Redistricting

Comm’n, 576 U.S. 787, 817 (2015); see also New State

Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 311 (1932)

(Brandeis, J., dissenting). They too, must grapple

with knotty questions of the separation of powers, including executive immunity. The amici States’ experiences with executive immunity give them a keen interest in how this Court approaches this case.

The amici States also have a deep interest in the

law of executive immunity, as anything this Court decides on the subject will influence equivalent state

doctrines.

Finally, the amici States have an interest in a robust and agile office of the chief executive within the

bounds of the rule of law.

INTRODUCTION

Presidential immunity is very broad and necessary. But it is not absolute. The limits of that immunity might aptly be described as Judge Easterbrook

long-ago described the circumstances and consequences for setting aside corporate immunity—they

are like “lightning:” “rare” and “severe.” Frank H.

Easterbrook & Daniel R. Fischel, Limited Liability

and the Corporation, 52 U. Chi. L. Rev. 89, 89 (1985).

Setting aside either should not be “unprincipled.” See

id.; see also id. at 109–13. Ohio, Alaska, and Wyoming

submit this amicus brief to propose a principled standard for that rare instance: the charged acts’ nexus to

Article II power and the urgency of the situation surrounding those acts. Whether this case is that rare

instance can only be determined in light of facts yet to

be found in the court below.

That two-part standard is how the amici States

would urge the Court to answer the question about the

“extent” of presidential immunity. Order in No. 23939 (Feb. 28, 2024). Even very broad immunity cannot be absolute for official acts. An absolutely immune

executive is a monarch or a dictator. Immunity must

have limits in order to preserve the peoples’ sovereignty to assure that “no official, high or petty,” W.

Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624,

642 (1943), can place himself beyond their reach.

But presidential immunity must also be very

broad to achieve the purposes of Article II, and the coordinate branch of the judiciary should be chary of intruding upon it. Any analysis must account for the

many reasons justifying that protection, including as

a guard against a different threat to the peoples’ sovereignty—a political rival, high and petty, who might

use criminal process to deprive the people of their

choice for President.

To be sure, announcing a test for presidential immunity in this case’s posture might seem unusual.

But this case is the first of its kind. And it is boiling

with political overtones over the flame of the 2024 general election already well underway. Many citizens

perceive this case as politically motivated. After this

case, the idea of pressing criminal charges against a

current or former President will always be on the table. Announcing a test now, before all the facts are

aired, not only aids the trial process, but may well

“turn the national temperature down.” Trump v. Anderson, No. 23-719, 2024 WL 899207, at *7 (U.S. Mar.

4, 2024) (Barrett, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).

The amici States therefore encourage the Court to

define the “extent” of presidential immunity along the

lines outlined below so that further proceedings in this

first-of-its-kind case can be litigated within the Constitutional guardrails this Court announces. Presidential immunity generally, and the immunity claim

in this case especially, should turn on the alleged acts’

nexus to Article II power and the urgency of the alleged acts.

STATEMENT OF THE FACTS AND CASE

The amici States will not add to the Court’s reading load by plowing well-tilled earth covering the

background to this dispute.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

I. The President wields vast power and responsibility. That is, of course, part of the Constitution’s design, as it assures a vigorous executive. One enemy of

that planned vigor is the specter of liability. Immunity for official acts is therefore necessary for the President to be effective. And the President’s vast powers

necessitate a capacious immunity. Such broad immunity is reflected in the country’s history, as this is

the first case of its kind. Despite this history and the

mandate of the separation of powers, presidential immunity cannot be absolute. Absolute immunity would

betray the ultimate sovereignty of the people. The

push of the need for a vigorous executive and pull of

the peoples’ sovereignty require a test for immunity

that recognizes both of those values.

II. This Court’s order asks about presidential immunity’s “extent.” The amici States suggest that

immunity should be defined by standards, not rules,

because presidential immunity must be sensitive to

the almost limitless circumstances in which presidential immunity might arise.

A. In many contexts, this Court uses standards instead of rules to accommodate the boundless range of

contexts in which the standard will apply. One example is the doctrine for evaluating Fouth Amendment

searches. This Court has reversed lower courts for

adopting “bright-line tests” or “checklist[s]” to resolve

such cases. Florida v. Harris, 568 U.S. 237, 244

(2013). If the Fourth Amendment’s explicit text does

not command bright lines, presidential immunity derived from the Constitution’s structure does not command them either.

B. As in other areas of the law, a bright-line immunity test would risk both too much permission and

too much deterrence. A well-known example of rules

granting too much permission is the federal tax code.

It may be unrivaled for detail, but it is infamous for

over-incenting tax avoidance. That same risk could

attend a too-rigid rule of immunity by, for example,

immunizing conduct that would be urgent in wartime

by not peacetime. An example from the other direction is copyright law’s fair-use defense, which this

Court has shaped to avoid deterring the very creativity that the copyright law is designed to foster. See,

e.g., Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569,

577 (1994). A similar risk would flow from too-rigid

rules about presidential immunity. A bright line that

induces timidity would cost the country too much in

lost executive vigor.

III. All of this leads to a presidential-immunity

test that accounts both for the nexus of the charged

act to core Article II power and the urgency of the circumstances surrounding the charge act. Applying

that test might well look like the approach to qualified

immunity.

A. Deciding whether a charged act exceeds the

boundaries of presidential immunity should start with

asking how closely the act lies to core Article II power.

The closer an act is to that core, the stronger the case

for immunity. Conducting foreign affairs is closer to

the core than seeking confidential information of the

President’s political rivals. This nexus inquiry should

also be sensitive to other constitutional values. For

example, a criminal complaint that targets the same

conduct that led to impeachment and acquittal might

be a nonjusticiable political question. And a complaint targeting presidential speech might hit core Article II power so directly as to end the immunity inquiry without further analysis.

B. Deciding whether a charged act exceeds the

shield of presidential immunity also must account for

the act’s urgency. A decision in peacetime lacks the

urgency of a decision during wartime. Any decision

that an act lies outside immunity’s protection should

factor in the urgency of the President’s actions.

C. This two-factor standard can operate much like

qualified immunity. Like qualified immunity, presidential immunity may be resolved before trial, during

pretrial fact-finding, or even after trial. And, as with

qualified immunity, a court errs by resolving immunity in either direction before factfinding resolves a

question that proves dispositive.

ARGUMENT

Very broad, but not limitless, presidential immunity is dictated by our constitutional structure. Any

standard for deciding where presidential immunity

ends and presidential accountability begins must

start with the known unknowns: the nature of the executive acts and the circumstances in which they arise

are almost infinitely varied. Standards, not brightline rules, are best suited to such situations. The

amici States propose that those standards should look

to: 1. how close the charged act relates to core Article

II power and 2. how urgent the charged act was in the

circumstance.

The Constitution’s structure and history

demand

broad,

but

not

limitless

presidential immunity.

The President “occupies a unique position in the

constitutional scheme.” Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S.

731, 749 (1982). Unlike the other branches, the “President is the only person who alone composes a branch

of government.” Trump v. Mazars USA, LLP, 591 U.S.

848, 868 (2020). Despite the one-person composition

of the executive branch, its occupant “has vast responsibilities both abroad and at home.” Trump v. Vance,

140 S. Ct. 2412, 2437 (2020) (Thomas, J., dissenting).

Those duties “range from faithfully executing the laws

to commanding the Armed Forces.” Id. at 2425 (majority opinion). And those enumerated duties are not

the whole of the President’s responsibilities. The

President’s duties “are of unrivaled gravity and

breadth.” Id.

These vast and varied powers set the President

apart from all other officials in the country. For one

thing, in the President alone does the entire nation repose its hopes and dreams for the future. As Justice

Robert Jackson put it decades ago, the presidency concentrates executive authority “in a single head in

whose choice the whole Nation has a part, making him

the focus of public hopes and expectations. In drama,

magnitude and finality his decisions so far overshadow any others that almost alone he fills the public

eye and ear.” Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 653 (1952) (R. Jackson, J., concurring). Said another way, “[c]onstitutionally speaking,

the President never sleeps.” Vance, 140 S. Ct. at 2441

(Alito, J., dissenting) (citation omitted).

Reposing so much power and responsibility in one

person, of course, is a well-known part of the Constitution’s plan “to ensure both vigor and accountability”

in the Executive Branch. Printz v. United States, 521

U.S. 898, 922 (1997). “Energy in the Executive,” Hamilton remarked before ratification, “is a leading character in the definition of good government.” The Federalist No. 70, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed70.asp. An energetic executive, Hamilton continued, guarded against

foreign and internal threats, and assured the “steady

administration of the laws.” Id.

The greatest enemy of vigorous and energetic action in office is the specter of liability. An official with

one eye on later-imposed civil or criminal penalties

does not have both eyes on the public duties entrusted

to that office. The timidity that accompanies liability

is why the Constitution and the common law shield

official acts with an array of immunities. For example, the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause

counteracts legislative timidity, including from “intimidation by the [rival] executive and accountability

before a possibly hostile judiciary.” United States v.

Johnson, 383 U.S. 169, 181 (1966); see Const. art. I,

§6. And common law immunities similarly ensure

that a host of officials “who serve the government do

so with the decisiveness and the judgment required by

the public good.” Filarsky v. Delia, 566 U.S. 377, 390

(2012). Indeed, the Court has identified avoiding “unwarranted timidity” as “the most important special

government immunity-producing concern.” Richardson v. McKnight, 521 U.S. 399, 409 (1997).

If official vigor, and the immunity that helps ensure it, is “of vital importance” for run-of-the-mill officials, Filarsky, 566 U.S. at 390, immunity for the President is in a league of its own. No matter how important some other official may be to a locality, a state,

or a region, only the office of the President shoulders

duties “that are essential to the country’s safety and

wellbeing.” Vance, 140 S. Ct. at 2440 (Alito, J., dissenting). And presidential immunity has been linked

to a well-functioning executive throughout the nation’s history. Early on, Justice Story commented that

the President must have “the power to perform” his

duties “without any obstruction or impediment whatsoever,” including fear of “arrest, imprisonment, or detention.” Joseph Story, 3 Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States §156 (1833). More recently, the Court held that the President is absolutely

immune from damage suits for official acts and that

the office enjoys a privilege from discovery. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 749; United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S.

683, 708 (1974).

Immunity for the President rests not just on these

functional concerns, but also flows from the

Constitution’s structure. “Presidential immunity derives from and is mandated by the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers.” Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at

758 (Burger, C.J., concurring); see also Clinton v.

Jones, 520 U.S. 681, 691 (1997); United States v.

Nixon, 418 U.S. at 708. The basic insight is that the

President has vast duties, and “those duties come with

protections that safeguard the President's ability to

perform his vital functions.” Vance, 140 S. Ct. at 2425.

The deeper, structural insight is that the separation of powers guards against prosecutions that target

the President for political gain. After all, “targeting”

a candidate “may be an alluring and effective electoral

strategy.” Vance, 140 S. Ct. at 2447 (Alito, J., dissenting). Ask President Andrew Johnson. He escaped

conviction after being impeached for refusing to abide

a statute that this Court later said violated the Constitution. See 1 Trial of Andrew Johnson, President of

the United States, Before the Senate of the United

States on Impeachment by the House of Representatives for High Crimes and Misdemeanors 6 (1868);

Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 106–107, 176

(1926). The problem has only grown worse since then.

The “criminal laws have grown so exuberantly and

come to cover so much previously innocent conduct

that almost anyone can be arrested for something.”

Nieves v. Bartlett, 139 S. Ct. 1715, 1730 (2019) (Gorsuch, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).

“In other words, the opportunity for public officials to

weaponize the criminal justice system against their

political adversaries has never been greater.” Gonzalez v. Trevino, 60 F.4th 906, 908 (5th Cir. 2023) (Ho,

J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc).

These functional and structural foundations translate to an immunity so sturdy that in the nation’s

twenty-three decades even some of its most shameful

moments have not triggered criminal liability for the

President. See, e.g., Haaland v. Brackeen, 599 U.S.

255, 312 (2023) (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (noting presidential role in the Trail of Tears); Trump v. Hawaii,

585 U.S. 667, 710 (2018) (describing presidential role

in Japanese internment during World War II).

This immunity, like many others, is sturdy in another way, too. The immunity cannot evaporate once

a President leaves office. That would “eviscerate” the

immunity. Trump v. Thompson, 142 S. Ct. 680, 680

(2022) (Kavanaugh, J., respecting denial of application); cf. Nixon v. Admr of Gen. Servs., 433 U.S. 425,

449 (1977) (discovery privilege survives President’s

tenure); Swidler & Berlin v. United States, 524 U.S.

399, 410 (1998) (attorney-client privilege survives client’s death).

If these considerations protect a President during

or after holding office from civil liability, how much

more do the same principles apply to criminal liability? It is one thing to lose money and time in a civil

suit; it is vastly more serious where “the stakes are

higher” because “liberty or even life may be at stake.”

Mitchell v. United States, 526 U.S. 314, 328 (1999) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Yet executive immunity cannot be absolute. Perhaps nothing more starkly defined this Nation’s break

from the Old World and the prevailing norms of the

Eighteenth Century than the idea of the peoples’ sovereignty. The new nation was “a government of the

people.” McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 405

(1819); see also U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton,

514 U.S. 779, 821 (1995). As Lord Acton would later

quip, “There is no worse heresy than that the office

sanctifies the holder of it.” Letter from John Emerich

Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton, to Bishop Mandell

Creighton (Apr. 5, 1887). And in a government of the

people, no person—even the President—can be fully

above the law. All the officers of the government, from

the highest to the lowest, are “creatures of the law and

are bound to obey it.” United States v. Lee, 106 U.S.

196, 220 (1882). Not even the President is “above the

law.” United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 715; see also

Vance, 140 S. Ct. at 2432 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring).

The push of immunity and pull of the peoples’ sovereignty means that, while it is “important” to recognize that “no man is above the law, … there is no question that the nature of the [presidency] demands in

some instances that the application of laws be adjusted” in some way. Vance, 140 S. Ct. at 2446 (Alito,

J., dissenting).

More specifically, determining

whether immunity or accountability must prevail will

turn on the specific actions charged as unlawful and

the urgency of the circumstances that triggered the

President’s action. A court tasked with deciding a

question of presidential immunity must proceed “with

awareness of the fact that specific circumstances, often hard to predict in advance, could warrant special

treatment in an appropriate case.” Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. 631, 650 (2010). In other words, the

“lower courts in cases of this sort involving a President

will almost invariably have to begin by delving into”

the details of charged crimes and the reasons for the

President’s actions. Vance, 140 S. Ct. at 2433 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). That is so because, while

immunity may cover almost everything the President

does, it does not quite shield absolutely everything.

II. The test defining the limits of presidential

immunity should be a fact-intense set of

standards, not a bright-line set of rules.

This Court framed the question presented in terms

of any immunity’s “extent.” The test for deciding

when that immunity ends must account for the many

different circumstances that might pose an immunity

question. The test should be standard-focused, not

rule-focused. That conclusion follows from the nature

of presidential immunity and the well-known risks

that bright-line rules pose through either over-permissiveness or overdeterrence.

The many contexts in which

presidential immunity may arise call

for standards, not rules.

The simultaneous push of the separation of powers

and the pull of the peoples’ sovereignty means that the

President enjoys immunity from criminal liability for

official acts in many, but not all circumstances. That

is the easy part. The hard part is how to give some

shape to an immunity doctrine pushed and pulled in

opposite directions by powerful constitutional values.

The question of presidential immunity, like so

many open questions in law, triggers the classic debate between rules and standards. The law, of course,

should always aim for rules, which promote predictability and stability. See, e.g., Antonin Scalia, The Rule

of Law as a Law of Rules, 56 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1175,

1179–80 (1989). And at least two rules emerge from

what has been said so far. One, as dictated by the separation of powers, broad presidential immunity is necessary to preserve a vigorous executive branch. Two,

as required by the ultimate sovereignty of the people,

that immunity must have some limits such that the

people may hold the President criminally liable in the

rare circumstances that unquestionably call for it.

Beyond those hard rules, though, the limitless variability in which a question of presidential immunity

might arise calls for standards, not rules. See id. at

1186–87. That would hardly set presidential immunity cases on an island. In some areas, courts must “eschew[] mechanical rules.” Holmberg v. Armbrecht,

327 U.S. 392, 396 (1946) (Frankfurter, J.). For example, this court resolves disputes about Fourth Amendment searches using a “flexible, common-sense standard” because the demands of that amendment are “not

readily, or even usefully, reduced to a neat set of legal

rules.” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 232, 239 (1983).

Those cases do not turn on “bright-line tests” or

“checklist[s]” Florida v. Harris, 568 U.S. 237, 244

(2013). Indeed, a lower court commits error by trying

to impose neat rules in this area. See id. at 244, 250.

A similar standards-based approach characterizes the

Court’s Sixth Amendment right-to-counsel cases. In

those cases, no “set of detailed rules … can satisfactorily take account of the variety of circumstances” that

such claims present. Strickland v. Washington, 466

U.S. 668, 688–89 (1984). And as with the Fourth

Amendment, lower courts err when they try to craft

“strict rules” to evaluate these claims. Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 195–96 (2011). Many other legal

questions require standards rather than rules. See,

e.g., Arkansas Game & Fish Comm’n v. United States,

568 U.S. 23, 37 (2012) (takings-clause claim for an

easement); Wilkinson v. Austin, 545 U.S. 209, 224

(2005) (procedural due-process); United States v.

Young, 470 U.S. 1, 16 (1985) (plain error).

If the explicit commands of the Fourth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment cannot always be

reduced to sharp-edged rules, all the more so for presidential immunity, which represents a “broader presupposition of our constitutional structure.” Allen v.

Cooper, 589 U.S. 248, 254 (2020) (citation omitted); see

also Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 730, 736 (1999).

When a court is faced with deciding whether particular presidential acts (or words) are immune from criminal prosecution, it should not make that judgment

without a fully developed factual record. And courts

err in this area if they try to use categorical rules either to grant or deny immunity. See, e.g., eBay Inc. v.

MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388, 394 (2006) (lower

courts committed errors in opposite directions by applying a categorical rule to grant or deny relief respectively). And they should be sensitive in this area to

the possibility that a seemingly clear-cut case may involve “countervailing factors,” Puckett v. United

States, 556 U.S. 129, 143 (2009), that only appear from

the full record.

As in other areas of law, bright-line

rules for presidential immunity risk

either too much permission or too

much deterrence.

The reason that some legal questions—like the

Fourth and Sixth Amendment examples above—must

be answered by standards instead of rules is that rules

sometimes confer too much permission or impose too

much restraint. The basic problem is easily illustrated. If a rule criminalized doctors performing any

medical procedure without informed consent, it would

stop the good Samaritan doctor from aiding the unconscious car-crash victim she happened upon right after

the accident. From the other direction, imagine an

immunity from the informed-consent crime for any

procedure a doctor performed while the patient was

unconscious. That immunity—applied without context—would let a doctor avoid consequences despite

sexually assaulting unconscious patients.

The law, of course, is more nuanced than this simplified hypothetical, yet it is not immune to the problems that too-rigid rules create when standards would

better fit the task. Start with the problems created

when too-rigid rules confer too much permission. The

multi-volume tax code is a classic example. “The tax

law is the paradigmatic system of rules.”

Weisbach, Formalism in the Tax Law, 66 U. Chi. L.

Rev. 860, 860 (1999). But “taxpayers have been able

to manipulate the rules endlessly to produce results

clearly not intended by the drafters.” Id. That result

not only fails the goals of taxation, but “demoralizes”

those who put their faith in a system of rules. Id.

This Court’s cases provide other illustrations. For

example, this Court reversed the Federal Circuit’s

“rigid approach” to the defense of patent obviousness.

KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415 (2007).

That rigidity, of course, encouraged patent seekers to

claim immunity from competition and “withdraw[]”

valuable knowledge “into the field of its monopoly and

diminish[] the resources available to skillful men.”

Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Supermarket

Equipment Corp., 340 U.S. 147, 152–153 (1950).

The lessons of these doctrines translate to presidential immunity. Like the very rigid and detailed

rules of the Internal Revenue Code, a rule that marks

the outer limit of immunity would confer too much

permission to future Presidents. For example, a rule

of immunity regarding property seizures would make

sense in wartime, but license too much power in

peacetime. The hypotheticals could be endless, but

that is the point. The President’s wingspan is so great

that etching the rules for all circumstances in advance

betrays the flexibility needed for the unforeseen.

In the other direction, rigid rules imposed in places

where flexible standards should prevail risks “‘overdeterrence,’ i.e., the possibility that severe … penalties will chill wholly legitimate” activity. Texas Indus., Inc. v. Radcliff Materials, Inc., 451 U.S. 630,

636–37 (1981) (citation omitted); see also R. Bork, The

Antitrust Paradox 78 (1978). The Court’s approach to

copyright’s fair-use defense, for example, avoids outcomes in which deciding cases through “rigid application” of the law might “stifle the very creativity which

that law is designed to foster.” Campbell v. Acuff-Rose

Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569, 577 (1994). And that defense, because it applies in many contexts, is framed

as a set of “general principles, the application of which

requires judicial balancing, depending upon relevant

circumstances.” Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc.,

141 S. Ct. 1183, 1197 (2021). The doctrine is necessarily “flexible,” and “its application may well vary depending upon context.” Id. at 1197. For example, the

more utilitarian the protected work, the more forgiving the law is to fair use. Andy Warhol Found. for the

Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, 598 U.S. 508, 527

(2023).

A similar concern drives this Court’s approach to

the right to counsel. The Court has treated the Sixth

Amendment as imposing a minimal baseline of competent assistance of counsel for defendants. At the

same time, the Court cautions that a hard-and-fast

“set of rules would interfere with the constitutionally

protected independence of counsel and restrict the

wide latitude counsel must have in making tactical decisions. … Indeed, the existence of detailed guidelines

for representation could distract counsel from the

overriding mission of vigorous advocacy of the defendant’s cause.” Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668,

689 (1984).

These overdeterrence risks bear on the judicial

task of setting standards for presidential immunity

When overdeterrence cows public officials “in the discharge of their duties,” the resulting timidity “can entail substantial social costs.” Anderson v. Creighton,

483 U.S. 635, 638 (1987). Such “in terrorem restraint”

on public officials is harmful when it restrains individual police officers, see Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335,

354 (1986) (Powell, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), and that effect is all the more damaging

when it restrains the President.

Both risks—over-permissiveness and overdeterrence—take on added saliency when used to set the

boundaries of presidential immunity. Any rule-like

pronouncement could result in too much permission or

too much restraint for a President when that rule-like

legal principle must be applied to the huge variety of

presidential action.

III. The standards for setting the extent of

presidential immunity should account for

the charged act’s nexus to Article II power

and the urgency of the act charged as crime.

All told, the wide variety of the President’s duties

translates to a wide variety of circumstances that

might call for immunity from prosecution. The foreign-affairs powers, if exercised to kill enemies of the

state, would almost certainly require immunity as to

a murder charge. The appointment power, if used to

make an allegedly corrupt appointment, would raise a

less-obvious question of immunity from bribery

charges. And the pardon power, if used to release convictions of political donors, could raise questions of immunity from conspiracy charges. The near-limitless

contexts for possible immunity lead the amici States

to propose that the test for those rare times when a

court should conclude that a President in not immune

be guided by two principles. One, that courts account

for how closely the alleged crime related to core Article

II power. The closer to core power, the stronger the

case for immunity. Two, that the courts account for

the urgency of presidential action. The more urgent

the actions, the stronger the case for immunity.

The test for the scope of presidential

immunity must account for the nexus

between the charged act and core

Article II power.

The nexus component has two sub-components.

The first resembles a simple measurement. It asks

how close the charged actions lie to core Article II powers. The second is more conceptual. It asks whether

other constitutional values shed light on how close the

charged act lies to core Article II power. The second

factor honors the maxim to measure twice and cut

once.

Proximity to core Article II power. One factor to

drive the immunity decision is how central the

charged acts are to the core of Article II power. For

starters, any conduct can be assessed against congressional action to decide whether any charged conduct

represents “maximum” power, power at its “lowest

ebb,” or power in “a zone of twilight” between those

two. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., 343 U.S. at 635–

37 (R. Jackson, J., concurring). And within those categories, surely the Court can recognize the difference

between “core executive power” such as investigating

and prosecuting crime, Seila L. LLC v. Consumer Fin.

Prot. Bureau, 140 S. Ct. 2183, 2200 (2020), and the

outer limits of official conduct. We may never know,

for example, whether President Grant was engaged in

any official business when he was arrested for speeding his horse in the area of 13th and M Streets NW,

but his actions that day lay further from core Article

II power than appointing ambassadors or investigating crime. See Meilan Solly, When President Ulysses

S. Grant Was Arrested for Speeding in a Horse-Drawn

Carriage, Smithsonian Magazine (March 31, 2023)

(available at https://perma.cc/36WQ-K3SN); see also

Only Policeman Who Ever Arrested a President, The

Sunday Star, Part 4 at 2 (Sept. 27, 1908). More recently, President Clinton raised eyebrows when he

gifted overnight White House stays to major campaign

donors. Liz Essley Whyte, The Lincoln Bedroom is

Still Paying Dividends, Slate (Oct. 26, 2015, 12:08

PM). Those acts, too, are far afield from core Article

II power.

Under this part of the inquiry, factfinding will

evaluate the relationship between the actions charged

and the President’s official responsibilities. The closer

the actions to the core of Article II power, the stronger

the case for immunity. For example, even lawyerly

creativity might be unable to conjure up a hypothetical in which a President would lose immunity for an

act taken under the Article II power over foreign affairs. See, e.g., United States v. Curtiss-Wright Exp.

Corp., 299 U.S. 304, 318 (1936); Zivotofsky v. Kerry,

576 U.S. 1, 32 (2015). On the other hand, an act of

domestic violence in the White House when the President’s spouse is also a federal employee should not

retain the veil of immunity. The same might be said

for conspiring to obtain the confidential tax information of the President’s political enemies and

launching audits against them. See H. Comm. on the

Judiciary, Impeachment of Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, H.R. Rep. No. 93-1305, at 3

(Aug. 20, 1974).

Other constitutional values. The amici States suggest two constitutional values that help illuminate

whether a changed act is bound up in an Article II

power—the political-question doctrine and the value

placed on speech.

In evaluating the charged acts’ nexus to Article II

powers, a court should account for Article III limits on

judicial power as reflected in the political-question

doctrine. That doctrine acts as a restraint on federal

court’s “authority to decide the dispute before it.” Zivotofsky v. Clinton, 566 U.S. 189, 195 (2012). The doctrine involves the delicate “relationship between the

judiciary and the coordinate branches of the Federal

Government.” Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 210

(1962). One of those situations is the “unusual need

for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made.” Id. at 217; Zivotofsky v. Clinton, 566

U.S. at 203 (Sotomayor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Here, the indictment overlaps

with the conduct vetted in an impeachment and acquittal. In those rare circumstances, the President’s

immunity may well be a political question. The final

answer would depend on whether the impeachment

acquittal covered all the conduct proven in the criminal case.

The point is not that immunity is always a political

question, only that it becomes a political question

when Congress has already used the political process

to evaluate and acquit the exact same conduct. In that

way, immunity would operate like the Guaranty

Clause, which sometimes poses political questions

that the courts will not resolve, and sometimes poses

questions that the courts will adjudicate. Compare,

e.g., Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. 1 (1849), with, e.g., Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875); see also Baker,

369 U.S. at 222 n.48. Just like the Guaranty Clause,

presidential immunity should remain in place if the

political process—in Borden the executive branch’s

“determination” of the legitimate government of

Rhode Island; here the legislative branch’s impeachment acquittal—has already reviewed and rejected

the claim brought to court. A decision shielding the

President from liability for acquitted conduct would

treat presidential immunity as a non-justiciable political question because the political branches had taken

up and decided the question for themselves.

Another constitutional value that may shine a

light on whether the charged acts are linked to core

Article II power is whether those acts are speech.

Speech holds a special place in our constitutional history and our constitutional order. “The theory of our

Constitution is ‘that the best test of truth is the power

of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition

of the market.’” United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S.

709, 728 (2012) (quoting Abrams v. United States, 250

U.S. 616, 630 (1919) (Holmes, J., dissenting)). The

First Amendment, of course, does not apply when the

government speaks. See, e.g., Pleasant Grove City v.

Summum, 555 U.S. 460, 467–468 (2009). Instead, it

is “the democratic electoral process that first and foremost provides a check on government speech.” Walker

v. Texas Div., Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., 576

U.S. 200, 207 (2015). Government speech is both a

product of the democratic process and is accountable

to the democratic process when the “government purposefully expresses a message of its own through persons authorized to speak on its behalf,” see Shurtleff

v. City of Boston, 596 U.S. 243, 267 (2022) (Alito, J.,

concurring in judgment). And when the President

speaks, he exercises “high constitutional duties.”

Akhil Reed Amar & Neal Kumar Katyal, Executive

Privileges and Immunities: The Nixon and Clinton

Cases, 108 Harv. L. Rev. 701, 706 (1995). What is

more, the President speaks for the nation, and the nation has the power to hold the President to account for

that speech. So a prosecution that targets presidential speech targets the President exercising core Article II powers.

All told, the nexus inquiry asks whether an act

charged as a crime lie at Article II’s core—in which

case immunity is probably per-se—or whether the

charged act lies at Article II’s “outer perimeter,” Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 757—in which case the court

should consider the urgency behind the charged act.

The test for whether an act lies

beyond the scope of presidential

immunity must account for the

urgency of the act charged as a crime.

The second key factor in assessing any immunity

claim is the urgency of presidential action. Various

executive actions responding to the world wars arose

from the urgent demand for executive action. See, e.g.,

Exec. Order No. 2729A (June 15, 1917) (creating the

Office of Alien Property Custodian); Exec. Order No.

9215, 7 Fed. Reg. 5205-07, Authorizing and Directing

the Secretary of War to Assume Full Control of Certain

Airports (Aug. 8, 1942). By contrast, little urgency

usually attends a presidential decision to make an appointment or grant a pardon. Yet all of these actions

have been questioned as illegal. See, e.g., Alabama

Ass’n of Realtors v. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., 141

S. Ct. 2485 (2021) (pandemic orders); N.L.R.B. v. Noel

Canning, 573 U.S. 513, 513 (2014) (appointment); Ex

parte Wells, 59 U.S. 307 (1855) (pardon). And it is not

hard to imagine official action along these lines challenged as criminal. See, e.g., Powell v. McCormack,

395 U.S. 486, 555 n.18 (1969) (Opinion of Douglas, J.)

(describing allegation of soliciting money to procure

pardon); Mississippi v. Johnson, 71 U.S. 475 (1866)

(challenge to martial law during reconstruction).

To decide whether a President is immune from a

criminal charge under this part of the inquiry, factfinding will determine whether the situation demanded the President’s actions. A President seizing

property to punish political foes during an election

presents a vastly different context than a President

seizing property during a war. A President speeding

along the highway to meet a golfing buddy is a far different context than a President speeding to the situation room in the White House to orchestrate military

operations.

The two-factor standard for

presidential immunity could operate

much like this Court’s approach to

qualified immunity.

These twin considerations—how tightly the

charged act is bound to core Article II powers and the

demand for decisive presidential action—would mean

that immunity in a given case may not be resolved

without fact-finding, and perhaps not without trial.

Indeed, the amici States urge the Court to remand

this case for fact-finding consistent with the Court’s

guidance. But in such a sensitive area, that is a feature of this approach, not a drawback.

Perhaps the most direct analogy that might guide

the approach here is the well-developed law of qualified immunity. This Court has certainly stressed the

importance of resolving qualified immunity as early

as possible. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231–

32, (2009); Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 200–01

(2001). That might mean resolving it at the motionto-dismiss stage. On the other hand, courts sometimes act too quickly to resolve immunity. See, e.g.,

City of Escondido, Cal. v. Emmons, 139 S. Ct. 500

(2019); Sause v. Bauer, 585 U.S. 957, 958 (2018). Indeed, many qualified-immunity cases are resolved at

summary judgment, after many facts are developed.

Courts jump the gun by resolving immunity when the

facts need further development. See, e.g., Lombardo

v. City of St. Louis, Missouri, 143 S. Ct. 2419, 2422

(2023) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). And resolving immunity without factfinding

might pretermit a defense that “could succeed” if the

proponent attacking immunity “cannot prove the facts

he alleges.” Taylor v. Riojas, 592 U.S. 7, 12 (2020)

(Alito, J., concurring in judgment).

These observations track experiences in the circuit

courts, which deal with the day-to-day decisions about

qualified immunity. “Though rare, trial courts may

consider qualified immunity after trial.” Taylor v. City

of Milford, 10 F.4th 800, 812 (7th Cir. 2021). It “may

be,” in fact, “that the qualified immunity issue can

only be resolved at trial,” Sabir v. Williams, 52 F.4th

51, 65 n.10 (2d Cir. 2022), because “the jury itself decides issues of fact that are determinative of the

qualified immunity defense,” Bailey v. Swindell, 89

F.4th 1324, 1329 (11th Cir. 2024). For example, there

may be “a set of facts, established at trial,” that would

justify immunity. Taylor, 10 F.4th at 812.

On the whole, presidential immunity could operate

like qualified immunity: when a question remains

about “[w]hether the conduct … actually occurred ...”

as alleged, the defense “must be reserved for trial.”

Ray v. Roane, 948 F.3d 222, 228–29 (4th Cir. 2020)

(quotation marks omitted; alterations in original).

For presidential immunity, a genuine question may

linger until after trial about whether the acts charged

as crimes have any nexus to official action or a genuine question may remain for trial whether any overriding need justified the President’s conduct. Often in

criminal cases, all that is known is that much is unknown until trial. Without trial, and the cross-examination that is rightly hailed as “the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth,” a conclusion about immunity either way will often be premature. See John Henry Wigmore, 5 Evidence in Trials

at Common Law §1367 (J. Chadbourn ed. 1974).

Returning to the presidential-immunity context,

imagine the following. A criminal complaint alleges

conduct that would be a crime. But as the trial process

unfolds, facts may develop that show the conduct related to a core Article II power, like national security,

or facts may reveal the justification for urgent action

that could not have been disclosed at the time of the

acts. The near-limitless variety of circumstances a

President must confront amplifies the possibility that

some circumstances revealed in the factfinding process will seal the case for immunity that is not apparent at the charging stage.

If charging ex-Presidents follows the trendline in

impeaching Presidents, the immunity question posed

here requires this Court’s hand to shape a doctrine

likely to see increased use. But it also requires restraint so that the doctrine develops incrementally. If

“a page of history is worth a volume of logic.” New York

Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U.S. 345, 349 (1921) (Holmes,

J.), then the relatively blank history to date is a reason to move slowly in this area. But moving slowly

does not mean staying silent. At bottom, the amici

States ask that the Court set out some guideposts for

resolving the “extent” of presidential immunity, but

leave for the district court the task of applying the

“framework in the first instance.” eBay, 547 U.S. at

394. Even if the case’s current posture “does not require” the Court to “now to apply the principle specifically,” setting forth these principles will avoid the appearance that the opinion “may appear to deny” the

legitimate breadth of presidential immunity. Clinton

v. Jones, 520 U.S. at 711 (Breyer, J., concurring). Immunity questions “implicate special concerns regarding the separation of powers” and the D.C. Circuit “did

not take adequate account of those concerns.” Mazars,

591 U.S. at 871. This Court should articulate those

concerns, and remand for proceedings consistent with

that guidance.

CONCLUSION

The Court should hold that presidential immunity

turns on the alleged act’s nexus to Article II power and

the urgency of the alleged act, and remand this matter

for further proceedings and factfinding.

Respectfully submitted,

DAVE YOST*

Ohio Attorney General

*Counsel of Record

MICHAEL J. HENDERSHOT

Ohio Chief Deputy Solicitor General

30 E. Broad St., 17th Fl.

Columbus, Ohio 43215

614-466-8980

Dave.yost@ohioago.gov

Counsel for Amicus Curiae

State of Ohio

Additional counsel listed on the

following page.

MARCH 2024

Additional Counsel

TREG R. TAYLOR

Attorney General of Alaska

BRIDGET HILL

Attorney General of Wyoming

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.