Bloomberg-funded state assistant AGs advancing climate agenda spark lawsuit from dairy farmers

Dairy industry groups in Wisconsin are suing the state's Justice Department and attorney general over an agreement between the Wisconsin DOJ and a New York University School of Law climate activism center funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s foundation. 

The State Energy & Environmental Impact Center at NYU was founded in 2017 with a $6 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. The center, which isn’t named in the lawsuit, was a response to the first Trump administration’s efforts to deregulate environmental policies. 

According to its website, it “supports the work of state attorneys general in defending, enforcing, and promoting strong laws and policies in the areas of climate, environmental justice, environmental protection, and clean energy.” 

The center’s fellowship program provides “special assistant” staffers in state attorneys general offices. E&E News reported in 2022 that the program had provided attorneys in at least 10 states and the District of Columbia. 

Nothing is free

The program paid the $90,000 per year salary of a special assistant attorney general within the Wisconsin attorney general’s office, appearing to offer her services for free. However, the lawsuit argues, “nothing in life is free,” and the special assistant’s services were to further the center’s climate-focused political agenda. 

The assistant attorney, the lawsuit explains, exercises the same authority exercised by any other assistant attorneys general at the Wisconsin DOJ. The unit in which the special assistant works is involved in litigation, permitting and regulatory enforcement that can result in legal fees and fines against dairy farmers and other industries. 

“Such an arrangement between a special interest group and a Republican Attorney General would be just as outrageous and unlawful. It is not difficult to imagine how a ‘Second Amendment Fellow’ deputized as a SAAG [special assistant attorney general] by the Gun Owners of America would be received. Or an ‘Anti-Abortion Fellow’ empowered to act on behalf of the State while being paid by the National Right to Life. The illegal agreement challenged here is no different in principle,” the lawsuit argues. 

The lawsuit claims the arrangement is illegal and violates the state’s constitution. 

Beyond private jets

Bloomberg has spent billions of dollars hoping to stop consumers from accessing fossil fuels, even though he enjoys a carbon footprint far exceeding the average American. 

In 2011, Bloomberg dropped $10 million into the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign, and he followed that up with another $500 million in 2019 to launch his “Beyond Carbon” campaign, which aims to eliminate any fossil fuel use in the U.S. economy. In 2023, he put another $500 million into the campaign. The announcement brags that the campaign was able to shut down 70% of U.S. coal plants and more than 30% of planned gas capacity. 

Over the past few years, reliability assessments by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a grid watchdog, find increasing risk of blackouts over much of the country due to the retirement of dispatchable generators. 

While Bloomberg provides billions to shut down America’s electricity baseload generators, a Business Insider analysis found that from August 2016 to August 2020, Bloomberg’s private jets took more than 1,700 trips and emitted at least 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s compared to a typical car, which emits 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide in a year. 

Targeting rural farmers

The NYU center Bloomberg Philanthropies funds seeks to advance Bloomberg’s political agenda through state attorney general offices. It keeps a database of actions state attorneys general have taken to “advance clean energy, climate and environmental laws and policies.” 

The center released a report in 2019 that counted 300 actions state attorneys general took since the start of the first Trump administration to “fight climate change, advance clean energy, and defend the bedrock environmental laws.” 

The Wisconsin lawsuit argues that the legal fellow the center provides to the state DOJ is representing the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in multiple active cases, including an enforcement action against a rural farmer over a “ditching project” that the DNR argued impacted wetlands and needed a permit. 

The DNR, according to the lawsuit, requires dairy farmers that qualify as “concentrated animal feeding operations” to secure certain permits, and DNR staff regularly conduct site visits to ensure compliance with the regulations governing the storage of manure and other agricultural regulations. 

Compliance with the regulations add costs to operations in an industry that’s struggling to stay afloat. 

Since the 1970s, there were 648,000 dairy farms in 1970 the U.S., and by 2022, that number dropped to 24,470. According to the Bullvine, a dairy industry news publication, the disappearing dairy farms result in job and economic losses that ripple across rural communities. 

Just the News reached out by phone and email to the Wisconsin DOJ for comment on the lawsuit and didn’t receive a response. 

Matt Fisher, spokesperson for the Wisconsin Republican Party told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last year that "Wisconsinites should be alarmed that Michael Bloomberg is bankrolling his own personal government prosecutor to do his bidding.” 

Gillian Drummond, communications director for Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, told the Sentinel that the special assistant helps the DOJ enforce state laws protecting consumers and natural resources. 

“Attorney General Kaul is committed to protecting clean water and combating climate change," Drummond said.

National campaign

The center’s actions have solicited legislation seeking to block its activities. In 2024, Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wis., introduced legislation to prohibit nonprofits from providing direct funding to state attorneys general. 

In 2021, bills were introduced in the Minnesota legislature that would prevent privately paid outside lawyers from working in the state attorney general’s office. In 2020, the Minnesota attorney general’s office had taken on two assistant attorney generals from the center, a point that was raised during hearings on the bill. 

Minnesota filed a lawsuit against oil companies and industry groups, alleging harms caused by climate change. The two special assistant attorneys general from the Bloomberg-funded NYU center are listed as counsel on the complaint. 

In 2023, Legal Newsline reported, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison posted a job ad in the Minnesota Star Tribune, seeking to replace one of the two special assistants. 

The listed salary range was $99,000 to $143,000. The positions, the ad stated, would be an employee of NYU, but will work “solely under the discretion of the” attorney general’s office. Testimony at the hearing on the bill to prohibit the practice revealed that the salary is paid for by the NYU center. 

Bloomberg Philanthropies is but one organization with billions to fund actions to stop consumers from using fossil fuels, and the organizations far outspend oil companies’ advertising budgets and fossil fuel industry groups. While these activist groups claim to be protecting people from the “climate crisis,” Wisconsin dairy farmers, according to the lawsuit, say they’re causing more harm than good.