Talk:Kathy Jennings

Suggested tenure section

• What I think should be changed (include citations):

COI Disclosure: I work in the public information office for the Delaware Department of Justice. Per WP:COI I am requesting, rather than editing directly, a "Tenure as attorney general" section (draft below).

Tenure as attorney general

Criminal justice and public safety

In February 2019, Jennings announced more than 30 internal policies governing the Delaware Department of Justice's approach to charging, sentencing, bail, probation, and expungement, including support for expungement of marijuana possession arrests. The following month she joined the Office of Defense Services and a group of legislators in introducing a package of criminal justice bills, among them Senate Bill 37, which expanded eligibility for expungement of adult arrest and conviction records. She also supported legislation ending mandatory life sentences for certain drug convictions and restoring driving privileges to people with drug convictions.

In January 2024, Jennings and state law enforcement leaders reported that Delaware's violent crime rate had fallen to its lowest level since statewide tracking began in 2008, a decline of roughly 40 percent, with homicides in Wilmington down more than 50 percent from their pandemic peak. Jennings attributed the decline to focused prosecution of gun offenders, the GunStat intelligence-sharing program, and gang prosecutions.

Police accountability

In June 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, Jennings announced a package of policing proposals at a press conference outside Legislative Hall, appearing alongside Governor John Carney, legislative leaders, and members of the Delaware Legislative Black Caucus. The proposals included greater public access to misconduct complaints, a statewide body-worn camera program, a public database of officers dismissed or who resigned because of misconduct, and a change to Delaware's use-of-force standard from a subjective to an objective test. She called for amending the state's Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights, a set of statutes that kept complaints against officers and subsequent internal investigations confidential, and which she said had been treated as "sacrosanct" within Delaware government. Delaware's police confidentiality statutes were among the most restrictive in the United States; a national database of police misconduct records compiled by USA Today in 2019 contained no Delaware officers because of the law, and the executive director of the ACLU of Delaware described the state as a national "outlier."

The proposals drew opposition from police union leaders. Fred Calhoun, president of Delaware's Fraternal Order of Police, said he was willing to negotiate but that Jennings had to decide whether she was the attorney general or "an activist," and said he would not compromise on reforms proposed amid protests. Timothy Mullaney, a longtime Fraternal Order of Police figure and former police misconduct investigator who had lost to Jennings in the 2018 Democratic primary, accused her of political opportunism.

Jennings described creating a statewide body-worn camera program as a top priority, and spent roughly a year convening law enforcement agencies, police unions, and community advocates before House Bill 195 was introduced in May 2021. The measure required officers to wear and use body cameras, directed the Council on Police Training to promulgate statewide standards, and established a central data storage program, with $3.6 million allocated in the state budget; Jennings said the recurring cost of data storage, rather than the cameras themselves, had been the main obstacle to wider adoption. Carney signed the bill in July 2021.

Her office subsequently endorsed House Bills 205 and 206 of the 152nd General Assembly, which established local police accountability boards, required accreditation of Delaware law enforcement agencies, and mandated public release of the names of officers found to have committed specified violations along with a narrative of their conduct. Some advocates said the final law fell short of full transparency.

Jennings's Division of Civil Rights and Public Trust has prosecuted police officers for on-duty misconduct. In 2023, former Wilmington police corporal James MacColl was convicted at trial of felony provision of false information to law enforcement and misdemeanor official misconduct, and acquitted of tampering with physical evidence. MacColl had replaced the barrel of his service weapon with an unauthorized aftermarket barrel, reinstalled the original after shooting a fleeing carjacking suspect in 2019, and denied the substitution in two interviews before admitting it in 2020; his use of force was found justified and he was not charged over the shooting itself. Prosecutors had dropped carjacking charges against the man he shot, citing MacColl's "total lack of candor" as fatal to his credibility as a witness. Prosecutors stated that it was the first felony conviction obtained at trial against a Delaware police officer “in living memory.” MacColl was sentenced to probation and 150 hours of community service after the court declined the state's request for a 30-day prison term, an outcome criticized by relatives of people shot by Wilmington police. On appeal, MacColl argued that his statements to internal affairs investigators were protected from prosecutorial use and that the Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights shielded the underlying files; the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed his convictions in January 2024.

In 2024, Delaware State Police trooper Dempsey Walters pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and deprivation of civil rights, along with lesser counts, after fracturing the orbital socket of a handcuffed 15-year-old in response to a doorbell prank; it was the first conviction under Delaware's deprivation of civil rights statute, enacted as part of the post-2020 reform package.

Opioid litigation and settlement oversight

Delaware first sued Purdue Pharma in 2018 under Jennings's predecessor, Matthew Denn; Jennings sued members of the Sackler family individually in 2019. She was among nine attorneys general who objected to an earlier proposed bankruptcy settlement and negotiated an increased contribution from the Sacklers. The resulting $7.4 billion settlement took legal effect in 2026, with Delaware's share of more than $27 million directed to the state's Prescription Opioid Settlement Fund. Her office also reached opioid-related settlements with McKinsey & Company in 2021 and a $350 million multistate settlement with Publicis in 2024.

In 2024, Jennings — a co-chair of the Prescription Opioid Settlement Distribution Commission, which administers Delaware's roughly $250 million in opioid settlement funds — called for a freeze on new grants, writing that the program was "rife with potential for fraud, waste, and abuse." In August 2024 her office wrote to the lieutenant governor's staff stating that it had been denied access to grant monitoring records for more than nine months despite her entitlement as co-chair to the commission's books and records. The commission's executive director responded that access had been requested on the office's behalf and that the department had not followed up. The State Auditor separately opened reviews of additional grant recipients. The dispute unfolded during a contested Democratic gubernatorial primary involving the lieutenant governor, and some addiction-services providers and members of the Behavioral Health Consortium criticized Jennings's intervention.

Consumer protection and antitrust

Jennings joined a bipartisan multistate antitrust suit against Google over its search business in December 2020, and a second suit in 2021, brought by 52 attorneys general, challenging Google's control of Android app distribution and in-app payments. The app-store case settled for $700 million, receiving final court approval in 2026. In October 2023, Delaware joined a bipartisan coalition suing Meta Platforms, alleging that features of Instagram and other products were designed to be addictive to minors in violation of state consumer protection law and the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

Because OpenAI's controlling nonprofit is incorporated in Delaware, Jennings's office held regulatory authority over the company's proposed corporate restructuring. After a review lasting about a year, conducted alongside California attorney general Rob Bonta, OpenAI abandoned an initial plan to remove the nonprofit from control of its for-profit operations and instead converted the for-profit entity into a public benefit corporation held by the nonprofit foundation. Jennings issued a Statement of No Objection in October 2025, citing commitments securing the primacy of the nonprofit's safety mission. Some observers argued the resulting safeguards were insufficient.

Environment

In July 2021, following an investigation by her office, Jennings announced a $50 million settlement with DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva resolving claims related to PFAS contamination, with funds directed to environmental restoration, sampling, and community environmental grants. A contingency in that agreement produced an additional $25 million payment in January 2026, and Delaware sued additional chemical manufacturers over PFAS in October 2023.

In September 2020, Jennings sued 31 fossil fuel companies and the American Petroleum Institute, alleging that the industry had known for decades that its products contributed to climate change while conducting a campaign to create public doubt. The complaint asserted negligent failure to warn, trespass, public nuisance, and violations of Delaware's Consumer Fraud Act. The defendants denied the allegations, and the litigation remains pending.

Firearms

Jennings advocated for a series of Delaware firearms measures, including the state's 2022 assault weapons ban and a 2024 law requiring a permit to purchase a handgun, which took effect in 2025 and requires fingerprinting, training, and an enhanced background check. Her office defended both laws against constitutional challenge; the Supreme Court of the United States declined to review them in January 2025. She also supported Senate Bill 300 of the 153rd General Assembly, which created a state licensing system for firearms dealers with training, recordkeeping, and surveillance requirements.

Jennings defended Delaware's 2022 restrictions on untraceable "ghost guns"; in September 2022, in Rigby v. Jennings, U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika preliminarily enjoined the law's bans on self-manufacture and possession of home-built firearms.

Beginning in 2023, Jennings's office investigated the retailer Cabela's over the alleged theft of an estimated 500,000 rounds of ammunition from its Christiana-area store, which investigators said had been stored unsecured on the sales floor and a portion of which they believed reached drug dealers in Delaware and Pennsylvania. The investigation examined potential violations of Delaware's firearms industry public nuisance law and the Keshall "KeKe" Anderson Safe Firearms Sales Act. After Cabela's sought to move a subpoena-enforcement action to federal court, a federal judge remanded the matter to state court in January 2024; the matter remains pending.

In June 2025, Jennings co-led a coalition of state attorneys general in New Jersey v. Blanche, challenging a federal decision to return previously seized forced reset triggers to their owners. In response to the states' motion for a preliminary injunction, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gave the court a sworn commitment not to return the devices into the fifteen plaintiff jurisdictions, including Delaware, and to warn recipients elsewhere against bringing them into those jurisdictions. After the agency confirmed it had adhered to those commitments, the states voluntarily dismissed the case in April 2026.

Public corruption and corporate accountability

In 2021, Jennings's office obtained an indictment of Delaware State Auditor Kathleen McGuiness on charges arising from the hiring of her daughter and the structuring of a consulting contract. A jury acquitted McGuiness of two felony counts and convicted her of three misdemeanors in 2022; the trial judge set aside one conviction, and in 2024 the Delaware Supreme Court reversed her conviction for official misconduct while upholding her conviction for conflict of interest. Jennings declined to retry the reversed count. McGuiness maintained that the prosecution was improper.

In September 2019, Jennings filed complaints in the Delaware Court of Chancery seeking dissolution of 15 Delaware business entities that her office said had been used for criminal purposes, including shell companies connected to Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, and Michael Cohen. The court ordered four LLCs and two corporations tied to Manafort and Gates dissolved by default judgment in October 2020.

In December 2024, following a multi-year investigation, Jennings reached a settlement with Wilmington landlord Adolph Jay Pokorny requiring him to pay $150,000 — including $125,000 in restitution for former tenants of North Adams Street buildings condemned after a 2022 wall collapse — and to exit the apartment management business in Delaware within 30 months, subject to a suspended $600,000 judgment. The office opened a claims process for former residents in 2025.

Reproductive rights

In January 2022, Jennings sued the city of Seaford, Delaware in the Court of Chancery over an ordinance requiring cremation or burial of fetal remains following abortion or miscarriage, arguing that state law comprehensively regulated the disposition of remains and preempted the ordinance. The court struck down the ordinance in June 2022.

Immigration

In 2025, Jennings's office intervened on behalf of a Sussex County domestic violence survivor who had been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a collateral arrest despite holding deferred action status as a pending U visa applicant, and who faced deportation to the country to which her convicted abuser had been removed. Department attorneys negotiated her release after nearly a month in detention, and Jennings' director of outreach and immigration assistance Maria Mesias-Tatnall traveled to Louisiana to accompany her home. In recognition of her efforts, Mesias-Tatnall attended the 2026 State of the Union Address as the guest of Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester, while Jennings attended as the guest of Representative Sarah McBride.

Federal litigation

Jennings has joined or co-led dozens of suits successfully challenging tariffs, a freeze on federal education grants, immigration-related conditions on federal funding, restrictions on Victims of Crime Act grants, and conditions attached to counterterrorism funding. Critics have argued that the volume of federal litigation has diverted the office's attention from state matters.

• Why it should be changed:

As written, this page does not include any substantial information about Jennings' actions in office, which I argue contributes to its low (C-class) rating. It covers her 2018 election and then stops, leaving two full terms in office essentially absent from the record.

Understanding any skepticism around my motives, I have included critiques and losses from the AG's tenure, including a loss in the Rigby firearms case, critiques from FOP leaders of her positions on police reform, the sentencing judge in MacColl overriding the state's recommended sentence, and critiques of her actions on the opioid settlement distribution commission amounting to a "witch hunt."

I have included a variety of references in this request. In full disclosure, State of Delaware press releases are used as citations where they pertain to Jennings' statements (e.g., announcing internal reform) or announcements (e.g., announcing legal settlements) but have corroborated them when possible with independent sources.

• References supporting the possible change (format using the "cite" button):

Valleybingo (talk) 00:35, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

References

Valleybingo (talk) 00:35, 14 August 2026 (UTC)