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VietnameseGriffin: ‘I’m proud to lead this bipartisan coalition as we applaud today’s unanimous victory in the Supreme Court’
LITTLE ROCK – Attorney General Tim Griffin today issued the following statement reacting to the unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court in favor of an Arkansas-led bipartisan coalition of 30 states in an unclaimed property dispute with the State of Delaware involving uncashed MoneyGram official check products:
“This is an important win for Arkansas and our coalition of states. For the past decade, Delaware has claimed millions of dollars that rightfully belong to us, and that money will now go where it belongs. I’m proud to lead this bipartisan coalition as we applaud today’s unanimous victory in the Supreme Court. I want to express my appreciation to my Solicitor General, Nicholas Bronni, who argued the case, as well as my extraordinary Solicitor General team.”
Background
The case, Arkansas et al. v. Delaware, centered on which state is entitled to take custody of funds payable on unclaimed official checks sold by MoneyGram, a money transfer services company that operates in all 50 states and internationally.
In 2016, Arkansas brought an original jurisdiction action in the Supreme Court seeking more than $250 million in unclaimed funds from uncashed MoneyGram official check products that were wrongfully handed over to Delaware.
Under the Federal Disposition Act, proceeds on unclaimed money orders, traveler’s checks and similar items must be turned over to the state where an item was purchased. Yet since 2005, MoneyGram has turned those funds over to Delaware, as its state of incorporation. In today’s opinion by Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a unanimous court agreed that those funds are governed by the Federal Disposition Act and that MoneyGram should have turned those funds over to Arkansas and its coalition partners, not Delaware.
The coalition is led by Arkansas, with a leadership group from California, Texas and Wisconsin. The other states in the coalition are Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming. Pennsylvania is allied with Arkansas’s coalition and did not argue separately, but deferred to Arkansas.
About Attorney General Tim Griffin
Tim Griffin was elected Attorney General of Arkansas on November 8, 2022. He was elected Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas on November 4, 2014, and was re-elected for his second four-year term on November 6, 2018. From 2011-2015, Griffin served as the 24th Representative of Arkansas’s Second Congressional District. For the 113th Congress, he was a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means while also serving as a Deputy Whip for the Majority. In the 112th Congress, he served as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Griffin is a graduate of Magnolia High School, Hendrix College in Conway and Tulane Law School in New Orleans. He also attended graduate school at Oxford University. Griffin has served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, for over 25 years and currently holds the rank of colonel. In 2005, Griffin was mobilized to active duty as an Army prosecutor at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and served with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault in Mosul, Iraq). He is currently serving as the Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) for the 81st Readiness Division at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Prior to his current post, Griffin served as the Commander of the 134th Legal Operations Detachment (LOD) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and a senior legislative advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness at the Pentagon. Colonel Griffin holds a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. He also served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas and Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Political Affairs for President George W. Bush. Griffin lives in Little Rock with his wife, Elizabeth, a Camden native, and their three children.
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