September 24, 2021Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.govTo date, the Department of Education has denied nearly all PSLF/TEPSLF applications OAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today led a coalition of 22 attorneys general in urging the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to take robust action to fix the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. Since borrowers first became eligible for relief in 2017, almost all PSLF applications have been rejected, leaving millions of public servants in the lurch. These teachers, nurses, public interest attorneys, social workers, first responders, servicemembers, and others incurred significant student loan debt in order to gain the [...]

September 24, 2021Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.govOAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced he will appeal Purdue Pharma's bankruptcy reorganization plan, which a New York bankruptcy court approved on September 17. Through their ownership and control of Purdue, members of the Sackler family made billions of dollars profiting from the sale of OxyContin, a powerful prescription opioid and key contributor to the ongoing opioid public health crisis. Despite this, in exchange for a monetary contribution to the reorganization plan, the plan includes sweeping third-party releases for the Sackler family. With no admission of liability, these releases grant the Sacklers [...]

September 24, 2021Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.govOAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced that — effective Sept. 30, 2021 — California will restrict state-funded travel to Ohio as a result of new anti-LGBTQ+ legislation recently enacted in the state. Specifically, provisions of the new legislation, House Bill 110 (HB 110), will allow medical providers in the state to deny care to LGBTQ+ Americans, including Californians traveling in Ohio. The new restrictions on state-funded travel to Ohio announced today are required by California Assembly Bill 1887 (AB 1887), which passed in 2016. “Blocking access to life-saving care is wrong. Period,” said [...]

September 23, 2021Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.govOAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced the recipients of a $10 million program to study the effects of vehicle emissions in California on public health and the environment. The grants, which stem from a 2016 settlement with Volkswagen over its emission cheating scandal, will fund research, development, and the acquisition of technology that enhances understanding of vehicle-related air pollution and its impacts, particularly in communities who are under-resourced and overburdened. “As the People's Attorney, I'm committed to using every tool in our toolbox to provide assistance to – and elevate the voices of [...]

September 22, 2021Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.govOAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today secured a court decision requiring the San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District (Air District) to comply with state air monitoring requirements for refineries. Petroleum refineries are among the largest non-vehicle sources of air pollution in the state and are often located in communities that already suffer from significant health disparities associated with exposure to pollution. This disproportionately includes low-income communities and communities of color. In an effort to address the air quality issues experienced by these communities, the legislature enacted a refinery air quality monitoring [...]

September 21, 2021Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.govOAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced the arrest of the leader of a nationwide, multiyear, multimillion-dollar student loan debt relief scam. The defendant owned a network of third-party debt relief (TPDR) businesses based in Orange County. They employed managers and sales agents to operate multiple call centers that contacted individuals across the country promising to reduce or eliminate their federal student loan debt. Instead, the owner, as well as four call center managers and two sales agents allegedly stole over $6,130,000 in less than three years from over 19,000 victims, including 3,000 [...]

September 21, 2021Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.govOAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today led a coalition of state attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court defending New York's law regulating when individuals may obtain a license to carry firearms in public. The coalition argues that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not provide Americans with an unrestricted right to carry loaded firearms in virtually all public places, but instead, in keeping with centuries of tradition, allows states to enact policies regulating public carry that are tailored to local public safety concerns and needs. “Nothing [...]

September 21, 2021Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.govAlliance expected to cost California consumers hundreds of millions of dollars Impacted airports include Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Long Beach, Burbank, Ontario, Oakland, San Jose, and Santa Ana OAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today joined the U.S. Department of Justice and seven other attorneys general in filing a lawsuit against American Airlines and JetBlue challenging an anticompetitive joint venture between the companies known as the Northeast Alliance. As part of the code- and profit-sharing venture, the airlines coordinate which routes to fly, when to fly them, and how many seats to offer, effectively [...]

September 20, 2021Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.govOAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta and New York Attorney General Letitia James today, leading a coalition of 13 attorneys general, urged the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) to restore penalties for automakers that failed to meet corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for model year 2019-2021 vehicles. In 2016, NHTSA imposed an inflation-adjusted penalty of $14 for every tenth of a mile-per-gallon (mpg) that an automaker falls below the CAFE standards beginning for model year 2019 vehicles. This penalty was reduced by NHTSA in an interim final rule just before President Trump [...]

September 21, 2021Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.govOAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced a consent decree that will address the potential anticompetitive effects of the merger of Providence Group, Inc. (Providence) with Plum Healthcare (Plum). Providence and Plum separately own several dozen skilled nursing facilities (SNF) throughout California, including two in rural Lake County. Following a joint investigation of the merger by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the California Department of Justice's Healthcare Rights and Access Section (HRA), the agencies determined that a consent decree with the companies would help prevent a SNF monopoly in the area and [...]

September 20, 2021Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.govOAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today led a coalition of 24 state attorneys general in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold its precedents protecting a woman's right to decide before viability whether to carry a pregnancy to term. In an amicus brief filed with the Court, the coalition argues that Mississippi's pre-viability abortion ban is unconstitutional and should remain unconstitutional. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that the Constitution does not permit States to prohibit a woman from deciding before viability whether to carry her pregnancy to term. [...]

September 20, 2021Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.govOAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today joined a bipartisan coalition of 32 attorneys general in support of Congressional efforts to modernize federal antitrust laws. In a letter to House and Senate leaders, the coalition expressed support for the principles behind six bills currently moving through Congress. These include the continued consideration of the Ending Platform Monopolies Act, the American Choice and Innovation Online Act, the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, the Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching (“ACCESS”) Act, the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, and the State Antitrust Enforcement Venue [...]