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Farmers File Lawsuit Against Josh Kaul
Dairy farmers in Wisconsin are taking the state’s attorney general to court over a privately-funded prosecutor who’s been tasked with environmental cases.
The Wisconsin Dairy Alliance and the Venture Dairy Cooperative on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Josh Kaul over the Special Assistant Attorney General for environmental litigation.
“It is troubling that this privately-funded attorney has the authority to impose fines and pursue criminal charges against our farmer members," Dairy Alliance president Cindy Leitner said in a statement. "This agreement between AG Kaul and NYU’s climate center raises serious questions about the influence of special interest groups on state attorneys.”
The State Energy and Environmental Impact Center began back in 2017 with a focus on environmental law. The lawsuit says Kaul's office signed a deal in 2021 that placed an environmental prosecutor in his office.
But the lawsuit claims that prosecutor is not wholly under Kaul's supervision.
"Under the Agreement, DOJ is restrained from setting the dates when the
[prosecutor] may begin or end her term. The Agreement does not give DOJ the discretion to set the specific start and end dates for…services,” the lawsuit claims. "The Agreement directs DOJ to assign the [prosecutor] to work on specific projects—namely, ‘matters relating to clean energy, climate change, and environmental matters of regional and national importance.’ Other lawyers at DOJ, by contrast, receive their assignments from the Attorney General, elected by and answerable to Wisconsin voters, or his senior staff—not outside groups."
The lawsuit adds that while the Environmental Impact Center sold the special prosecutor as “seemingly for free,” that “nothing is free.”
“The presence of a special interest attorney with the power to influence government actions undermines this process and places additional challenges on farmers. Not only are we defending our members against the resources of the government, but now we have to protect our members against a billionaire with an agenda,” the Venture Dairy Cooperative’s Kim Bremmer said about the case.
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