Replies

Career as Attorney General[edit]

In 2012, Attorney General Pruitt kept Oklahoma out of the mortgage settlement reached by 49 other states with five national lenders, with Pruitt citing differing philosophies of government.[3]

In 2013, Pruitt brought a lawsuit targeting the Affordable Care Act.[4]

In 2013, Pruitt supported the Oklahoma legislature’s bid to join four other states trying to restrict medical abortions by limiting or banning off-label uses of drugs, via House Bill 1970. after the state Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the abortion law was unconstitutional, Pruitt requested that the United States Supreme Court review the case. Pruitt was unhappy with the United States Supreme Court’s rejection of the Oklahoma case.[5][6]

Pruitt was pleased with the decision of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby in June 2014. Pruitt, an acquaintance of the Green family - the founders of Hobby Lobby, filed a brief with the Supreme Court in support of their position, that the owners of privately held companies need not provide their employees with birth control, if that goes against their beliefs. In a statement, Pruitt noted, “The founders established a Constitution to protect Americans’ religious freedom from an intrusive federal government. Today’s ruling solidifies the principle that our religion is not a silent practice confined to the four walls of a church, but it is an opportunity to live out our faith in the public square.”[7]

In June 2013, Pruitt maintained that the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a provision of DOMA, a federal law that denied federal benefits to homosexual married couples did not affect Oklahoma’s laws on the subject.[8]

Pruitt expressed his dissatisfaction when a federal court ruled that Oklahoma’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage was a violation of the U.S. Constitution.[9]

In October 2014, Pruitt criticized the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear Oklahoma’s appeal in the same-sex marriage case.[10]

On March 6, 2014, Pruitt joined a lawsuit targeting California’s prohibition on the sale of eggs laid by caged hens kept in conditions more restrictive than those approved by California voters. Less than a week later, Pruitt announced that he would investigate the Humane Society of the United States, one of the principal proponents of the California law.[11][12]

On September 9, 2014, in Pruitt v. Burwell, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma ruled against the IRS.[13]

In October 2014, a California judge dismissed the lawsuit, rejecting the arguments of Pruitt and the other attorneys-general concerning California’s Proposition 2, a 2008 ballot initiative. Judge Kimberly Mueller ruled that Oklahoma and the other states lacked legal standing to sue on behalf of their residents and that Pruitt and other plaintiffs were representing the interests of egg farmers, rather than “a substantial statement of their populations.” [14][15][16]

In November 2014, after the Oklahoma Supreme Court blocked the enforcement of two abortion-related laws until after their constitutionality was litigated (which could take up to a year or more), Pruitt’s office communicated the Attorney General’s intention to support their implementation and enforcement.[17] [18]

Pruitt has also sued the United States Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of Oklahoma utilities unwilling to take on the burdens of additional regulation of their coal-fired plants, and criticized the agency in a congressional hearing. [19][20] This is one of several lawsuits Pruitt has failed against the EPA.[21]

Pruitt ran unopposed in the 2014 primary election and won the November 2014 election for a new term as Attorney General.[22]

On December 6, 2014, the New York Times reported that Pruitt copied the text of an energy lobbyist’s letter to the Environmental Protection Agency and pasted it on official Oklahoma state letterhead and sent it to the EPA arguing that the EPA wasn’t properly measuring pollution from natural gas drilling in Oklahoma.[23]

In April 2015, news reports indicated Pruitt believed distribution of religious material to public school students was constitutional.[24]

On October 2, 2015, Pruitt asked to delay all scheduled executions in Oklahoma due to a mix-up involving a drug the state intended to use in the lethal injections.[25]

After the organization “Oklahomans for Health” collected the legally required number of signatures for a referendum ballot on the legalization of medical marijuana, in August 2016, Scott Pruitt’s office moved to rewrite the ballot title, but not in time for the November, 2016 election. The measure will appear on the 2018 ballot.[26][27]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Pruitt