Washington Attorney General Nick Brown made a stop in Bellingham last month, speaking at a City Club meeting and taking questions about his office's ongoing litigation against the federal government. Brown's visit highlighted both the breadth of his current docket -- 61 lawsuits filed against the Trump administration since he took office -- and the specific ways those cases are landing in Whatcom County communities.
Brown took office in January 2025, succeeding Bob Ferguson, who left to run for governor. In the year and a half since, his office has filed suit on issues ranging from environmental protections to housing to food safety. The full case list is publicly available through the Washington AG's federal litigation tracker.
Cases With Direct Whatcom County Impact
At a press conference following the Bellingham City Club meeting, Brown identified several ongoing federal cases with direct relevance for Whatcom County residents, particularly in coastal and rural communities.
Among the most significant: a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for repealing nationwide mercury emission standards from industrial sources. Mercury contamination is a longstanding concern in Puget Sound and along the Pacific Northwest coast, where tribal fishing rights depend on fish safe for consumption. The Lummi Nation, which holds treaty fishing rights in the Salish Sea off Whatcom County's shoreline, has specific stakes in whether those standards are restored.
Brown's office is also suing the EPA over its attempt to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding -- the foundational scientific determination that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles contribute to climate change and endanger public health. Revoking that finding would undercut the legal basis for vehicle emission standards across the country.
A third case involves the FEMA Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which the Trump administration shut down. Washington had 27 open projects through the program totaling $182 million, with the majority flowing to small towns, rural communities, and tribal nations. Brown noted that these are exactly the communities that rely most heavily on federal disaster resilience funding and have the least capacity to self-fund alternatives.
Housing, Healthcare, and Consumer Protections
Brown framed much of his office's work as addressing everyday concerns that don't always make national headlines but matter enormously to residents outside Seattle. Housing was a recurring theme throughout the Bellingham visit.
"It's surprising to me -- not anymore, but it was in the beginning -- about how consistently that comes up as a concern for people outside of Seattle," Brown said. His office has filed a lawsuit against RealPage, the algorithmic rental pricing software company, arguing that it and subscribing landlords conspired to inflate housing prices in violation of state antitrust and consumer protection law. Bellingham -- where rents are approximately 39 percent above the national average according to cost-of-living data -- is among the markets specifically cited in the broader context of that case.
The AG's office has also assumed a new oversight role in hospital mergers and consolidations under a recent rule change: when health facilities want to merge, they must now notify the Attorney General's office, which can review the transaction. Brown noted that healthcare consolidation disproportionately affects rural communities where a single system effectively holds a local monopoly over available care.
Among the more visible consumer cases: a lawsuit against Albertsons, parent company of Safeway and Haggen -- two chains with significant Bellingham presence -- for what Brown's office describes as deceptive buy-one-get-one-free promotions that masked gradual price increases on the original product. The office argues this practice violates the state Consumer Protection Act.
The Political Context
Brown was direct about the political environment his office is operating in. At the Bellingham City Club meeting, he described changes in the federal government since January 2025 as North Korea-esque.
"The portrait of the president of the United States is literally today hanging in the Department of Justice," he told the audience. "It saddens me that so much of our work is defending Americans from their president."
The 61 lawsuits Brown's office has filed represent one of the most active state-level legal challenges to any presidential administration in Washington's history. Brown noted that most of this litigation gets little media attention because it doesn't produce immediate dramatic rulings -- but the cumulative impact on environmental, housing, and rural community programs is significant.
Brown himself grew up in Steilacoom, a small city on the Puget Sound south of Tacoma. First Assistant Attorney General Maureen Johnston is a Bellingham native. Both backgrounds inform what Brown described as his office's deliberate focus on issues affecting communities outside the Seattle metro area.
What It Means for Whatcom County
For Whatcom County residents, the outcomes of several of Brown's federal cases will have tangible consequences in the years ahead. Environmental standards affecting Puget Sound salmon and shellfish, disaster resilience funding for smaller cities and tribal governments, and the trajectory of housing costs are all tied to litigation working through federal courts right now.
Residents who want to follow the specific cases affecting their community can track them through the AG's publicly available litigation tracker at atg.wa.gov. The tracker organizes cases by subject area with plain-language summaries and current status. Brown's office encouraged Whatcom County residents to engage with the tracker as a way of understanding what state government is actively doing to push back on federal policy changes that affect their daily lives.
