It has been one year since Utahns entrusted me with leading the largest law firm in the state of Utah: the Office of the Utah Attorney General. This office of dedicated attorneys, investigators, paralegals and other professionals has a profound impact on everyone in the state of Utah — whether they are aware of it or not.
When I was sworn in as Utah’s 22nd attorney general, some of the challenges I would face were foreseeable. I met those challenges by restructuring the office, committing to principles of transparency, and hiring some of the most skilled and trusted attorneys in the state. For instance, I hired John Dougall to be the head administrator for the office — someone who had served as Utah’s auditor for 12 years and in the Legislature for many years before that. I hired Stewart Young, a veteran federal prosecutor who had decades of experience prosecuting everything from white collar fraud to gang violence to drug cartels.
However, I soon realized that we faced challenges that were not as predictable. Artificial intelligence is forcing law firms across the world to reinvent how they function, and I was determined to stay ahead of the curve. Shortly after I stepped into the office, we implemented new policies to ensure that we utilized AI to maximize efficiency while maintaining the legal integrity that Utahns expect of our office.
There are many other changes that have been highlighted in the press this year. However, after crisscrossing Utah countless times during this past year, I wanted to highlight how our office has impacted each Utahn in ways that perhaps are not as well known.
We successfully defended a serious constitutional challenge to Utah’s ban on flavored vapes, thus protecting our children from products designed to lure them into nicotine addiction.
In response to Utah’s decades-long opioid tragedy, we worked closely with attorneys general around the country and Utah’s Department of Commerce to secure $55 million for Utah. We secured this from Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, for their role in this tragedy. Through our joint efforts on several cases, judges have now ordered that more than $600 million in settlement funds to be allocated to Utahns — a small measure of justice for the lives lost and families affected by the opioid epidemic.
We took on Aylo, one of the largest purveyors of online pornography on the planet. After hard-fought legal negotiations, we forced Aylo to remove all child sexual abuse material and all nonconsensual sexual material from all of its sites. This was a collaborative effort with other state and federal partners, and other states are now looking to follow Utah’s lead to protect children. As I announced when I was elected, I would fight to prevent child sexual exploitation, and this success will radically change the pornography industry worldwide. And that change begins here in Utah.
Because the Office of the Utah Attorney General is unafraid to stand against the world’s biggest companies in our efforts to protect Utahns, we worked with the Utah Department of Commerce to sue Snap, the company that operates the app known as Snapchat. Snap unleashed an experimental and untested AI chatbot on our kids and has been utilizing design features that deliberately addict children.
We also sued Ticketmaster and Live Nation for their hidden fees and misleading ticket prices that have frustrated countless Utah consumers.
In 2025, we more than doubled the number of prosecutions against predators and those attempting to exploit children. That team, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, not only worked with over 90 affiliate law enforcement agencies to do this but also conducted the first known arrest of a child predator who used cryptocurrency to purchase child sexual abuse material.
Our attorneys are responsible for every criminal appeal filed in the state of Utah. This last year we filed a record-breaking 225 criminal appeals briefs, defending the state and keeping in prison those convicted of aggravated child abuse, rape and child exploitation. In State v. Simpson, our attorneys’ successful arguments were also crucial in persuading the courts to affirm that the state can use key tools to prosecute serial rapists.
Our work doesn’t just involve putting and keeping offenders behind bars; we also save Utah taxpayers money by protecting against litigious plaintiffs and mitigating risk to the state. Our Government Operations and Labor Section recovered a record $19.5 million, which is over $1 million more than the previous year. This number included $1.5 million from employers who failed to contribute to the Workers Compensation Program. An independent analysis from Deloitte Consulting found that the high amount we collected enabled Utah’s Labor Commission to reduce the general assessment for all Utah employers, saving everyone money.
Last year, we advocated for Utah ratepayers after a 30% rate hike was proposed, which would have increased everyone’s electricity costs. Because of our efforts, the Public Service Commission lowered the proposed $667 million increase to just $87 million. As a result, Utah families will see an average monthly impact of just $4.31, saving households hundreds of millions of dollars.
I testified in front of the United States Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, suggesting important changes that can be made to federal laws to allow Utahns to better manage our state’s natural treasures. Our office fought numerous lawsuits in court in support of those public lands. We achieved notable successes: A federal court decided that the state and two counties hold the legal rights-of-way for Hole in the Rock Road and House Rock Valley Road, popular and historic routes that thousands travel each year to reach recreational areas on public lands.
We also recovered more than $643,000 in penalties from polluters who contaminated groundwater and surface waters across the state, thus safeguarding drinking water, recreation and agriculture.
This is just a sample of the successes this past year by the attorneys and other professionals in our office. It is an honor to work with them on behalf of all Utahns. There is much work to do, and we look forward to even more successes and victories in the year ahead for everyone in our state.