Troutman Pepper Locke State Attorneys General Team

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What Happened

States including Texas, Utah, Louisiana, and California have begun shifting children’s online safety obligations from individual apps and websites to app stores and operating systems. These laws generally require centralized age checks, parental consent tracking, and tighter coordination between app stores and developers, and they are already generating litigation risk, including a pending First Amendment challenge to the Texas statute. For a deeper overview of these state approaches and the emerging legal challenges, see this article.

PDX North, Inc. (PDX), a last-mile automotive parts distribution company, recently settled with the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (NJDOL) and New Jersey Office of the Attorney General (OAG) (collectively, the state) to resolve allegations that PDX violated New Jersey’s worker classification laws.

On March 16, 2026, New York Attorney General (AG) Letitia James rallied in support of the “One Fair Price Package” — a pair of bills aimed at curbing algorithmic and surveillance pricing in New York. Together, the bills would prohibit the use of personalized algorithmic pricing based on consumer data, ban electronic shelf labels in large food and drug retailers, and create robust enforcement mechanisms and private rights of action. The announcement from New York comes shortly after New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill backed legislation to ban what she has called “surveillance” pricing, and after California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced an investigative sweep focused on businesses that use consumer data to individualize prices for their goods or services earlier this year.

A bipartisan coalition of seven state attorneys general (AG) reached a settlement with the Chinese-owned messaging and payment platform WeChat under which the company committed to take steps to combat the use of its platform in fentanyl-related money laundering. The agreement focuses on improving law enforcement cooperation, preserving and producing user data in response to law enforcement requests, and proactively detecting illicit activity on the service. The settlement is part of a broader enforcement campaign by state AGs to push online platforms to adopt proactive measures to monitor illicit activity on their services and improve cooperation with law enforcement.

Virginia Attorney General (AG) Jay Jones has joined an ongoing lawsuit by 23 Democratic AGs challenging Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Acting Director Russell T. Vought’s interpretation of the CFPB’s statutory funding mechanism that would leave the agency without operating funds.

New York Attorney General (AG) Letitia James reached a $2.5 million settlement with health insurer EmblemHealth following an investigation of the behavioral health provider “ghost networks.” “Ghost networks” are provider networks in which many of the providers listed in the insurer’s directory of “in-network” providers are actually unavailable, not accepting new patients, or not actually participating in the network. The investigation also focused on compliance with state and federal behavioral health parity laws. As part of the settlement, the insurer will pay more than $2.5 million and undertake changes to its policies and procedures.

As the use of artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more prevalent in day-to-day life and in the legal field, in particular, thorny questions arise regarding the implications of that use. One such question is whether exchanges with a publicly available generative AI platform in connection with pending litigation are protected by the attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine. In a matter of first impression nationwide, U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York answered that question in the negative and required a defendant to provide the prosecution documents memorializing litigation-related communications with a generative AI platform.[1] Applying traditional principles governing the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine, the court reasoned that the communications did not involve an attorney-client relationship, were not confidential, were not made for the purpose of obtaining legal advice, and did not reflect an attorney’s trial strategy.[2] The ruling will likely impact whether legal protections are afforded to AI communications, prompts, and output in both litigation and regulatory inquiries, including state attorneys general (AG) investigations.

Graham K. Bryant, former Principal Deputy Solicitor General and Director of Virginia Appellate Litigation in the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia, has joined Troutman Pepper Locke’s Regulatory Investigations, Strategy + Enforcement (RISE) practice group and Virginia Appellate team. Graham’s practice centers on Virginia-focused appellate and regulatory matters, drawing on his experience handling high-stakes constitutional and policy litigation in Virginia’s courts and in federal courts, including multiple matters before the U.S. Supreme Court.

On February 24, the New Jersey State Senate unanimously confirmed the appointment of Jennifer Davenport to serve as New Jersey’s attorney general (AG). Davenport (whose nomination we covered here) has been serving in an acting capacity since Governor Mikie Sherrill took office in January.

On March 6, 2026, a U.S. district court will consider whether to approve a settlement agreement resolving parallel lawsuits by the Texas attorney general (AG) and the federal government against Houston-area developer Colony Ridge Development, LLC and related companies. The complaints in both suits — which were filed during the Biden administration — claim that Colony Ridge discriminatorily targeted Hispanic consumers with predatory financing to purchase land for residences in areas that were in fact uninhabitable.