Dana Nessel

Nessel started a state-wide campaign to crackdown on illegal robocalls targeting Michigan residents. This campaign includes initiatives to educate the public, toughen enforcement, and update state law. As of March 2020, over 2,400 caller complaints of illegal robocalls have been received by Nessel’s office.

In January 2020, Nessel filed suit against seventeen companies, including 3M and DuPont, alleging the toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) chemical manufacturers “intentionally hid” known health and environmental risks from the public and state while continuing to sell the PFAS chemicals since the 1950s. The suit seeks to hold the companies financially responsible for all past and future costs associated with the contamination at dozens of sites across the state of Michigan.

Nessel was sworn into office on January 1, 2019. She is the first openly gay person and first openly LGBTQ person elected to statewide office in Michigan. She is the first Democrat to serve as attorney general since Jennifer Granholm left the office in 2003, a gap of 16 years.

Nessel launched a new Conviction Integrity Unit within the Department of Attorney General’s Criminal Appellate Division. The unit investigates credible claims of innocence and rectifies wrongful convictions. To do this, officials work with county prosecutors, law enforcement officials, defense attorneys, and innocence clinic projects.

Under her Consumer Protection Division, Nessel launched the state’s first Payroll Fraud Enforcement Unit to investigate Michigan establishments that illegally misclassify workers or  withhold wages and benefits. She also established the Department’s Auto Insurance Fraud Unit, which received over 3,000 cases after only four months.

Keeping her promise to protect and defend consumers and ratepayers, Nessel saved utility customers $3.6 million after intervening in SEMCO Energy's gas recovery plan case. As of the end of 2019, Nessel has helped save Michigan utility ratepayers a combined $355,809,700.

Nessel took over the department’s investigation into sex abuse alligations against the Catholic Church from former Attorney General Bill Schuette. As of December 2019, the Department of Attorney General has received 641 tips on its clergy abuse hotline, identified 270 priests alleged to be abusers from dioceses in Marquette, Gaylord, and Grand Rapids, and received allegations involving 552 victims of clergy sexual abuse since the beginning of the investigation. So far, 1.5 million paper documents and 3.5 million electronic documents have been seized. The investigation team has reviewed 130 cases for potential charges, 50 of which were closed because the statute of limitations barred prosecution or the priest in question had died. Twenty-five cases have been referred back to the diocese for action because the priests were in active ministry. As of January 2020, nine priests have been charged and two have pleaded guilty.

In June 2019, Nessel filed suit independently in Ingham County Circuit Court for a Line 5 shut down “after reasonable notice” and a permanent decommissioning of the controversial oil and gas pipeline. The lawsuit argues that the operation of Line 5 violates the public trust doctrine, is a common law public nuisance, and violates the Michigan Environmental Protection Act because of its likeliness to cause pollution to and destruction of the Great Lakes and other natural resources. The attorneys general of Minnesota, Wisconsin and California have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of Nessel’s lawsuit.

On June 13, 2019, Michigan Attorney General Nessel's office dismissed all pending criminal cases tied to the Flint water crisis. Under Michigan's previous attorney general, a Republican, 15 people were charged with crimes related to the water crisis. Several pleaded no contest and were convicted. Prosecutorial overreach possibly tainting the judicial process plagued the investigation from the beginning.

The dismissal effectively ended prosecutions of eight current and former officials accused of neglecting their duties and allowing Flint residents to drink tainted, dangerous water. Children of Flint drank poisoned water with dangerous quantities of lead. At least 12 people died in a Legionnaires’ outbreak that prosecutors linked to the water change. Among the officials whose charges were dropped: the former director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, a state epidemiologist, a former Flint public works director and emergency managers who had been appointed to oversee the city. Some defendants had faced charges as serious as involuntary manslaughter. The defence lawyer for Howard Croft, the former Flint public works director who was charged with involuntary manslaughter, said the "attorney general’s decision validated his concerns about the investigation" and credited Nessel's "courage" in deciding to dismiss all criminal charges.

Nessel defended her prosecutors’ decision to drop the charges, but also sought to assuage the concerns of Flint residents, stating "justice delayed is not always justice denied."

Nessel has since opened the first ever satellite location of the Attorney General’s Office in Flint. Two victim advocates reside in the office along with the Flint Water Crisis prosecution team.

Nessel filed a lawsuit on behalf of the state of Michigan in December 2019 against opioid distributors using a law to pursue drug dealers. Nessel said that Michigan is the first state to sue drug manufacturers in this way. The companies involved in the suit are Illinois-based Walgreens, Ohio-based Cardinal Health Inc., Texas-based McKesson Corporation, and Pennsylvania-based AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation. According to the suit, the defendant drug companies sold opioids “in ways that facilitated and encouraged their flow into the illegal, secondary market” without proper safeguards, and they failed to monitor or report suspicious orders, including by knowingly selling pain pills to so-called pill mills. The damages against the defendants are projected to exceed $1 billion.

In 2018, Nessel won the Democratic Party nomination for Michigan Attorney General over former District Attorney Patrick Miles Jr., and defeated Republican Tom Leonard and three other candidates in the general election. She succeeded term-limited Republican Bill Schuette who ran unsuccessfully for the office of governor.

In 2018, Michigan passed legislation approved under former Governor Rick Snyder codifying an agreement between the state and Enbridge Energy to replace the Enbridge Line 5, sitting on the lakebed underneath the Straits of Mackinac with a tunnel below the bedrock. Despite a judge's ruling upholding the law in March 2019, Nessel issued an opinion that month stating the law was unconstitutional “because its provisions go beyond the scope of what was disclosed in its title.”. After Enbridge filed a lawsuit, a Michigan Court of Claims judge ruled in favor of Enbridge and rejected Nessel's reasoning, stating, "the argument advanced by defendants misses the mark."

While campaigning to become Attorney General for Michigan, Nessel made a series of statements regarding the Flint Water Crisis and its investigation leading up to the 2018 Michigan Attorney General election which took place on November 6, 2018.

In 2016, she founded Fair Michigan, a nonprofit organization that works to prosecute hate crimes against the LGBTQ community.

In 2014, Nessel successfully argued for the plaintiffs in DeBoer v. Snyder, which declared that Michigan's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional; the case was eventually combined with others and appealed to the Supreme Court as Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage in the United States.

In 2005, Nessel opened her own legal firm, Nessel and Kessel Law, where she handled criminal defense cases, civil rights actions, family law matters, and general tort litigation. While in private practice, she successfully represented the plaintiffs in DeBoer v. Snyder.

In 1987, Nessel graduated from West Bloomfield High School in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan. She played soccer and was named All-State. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and her Juris Doctor from Wayne State University Law School.

Dana Nessel (born April 19, 1969) is an American lawyer and politician who is the 54th Attorney General of Michigan. She is a member of the Democratic Party.