News Releases

AG Griffin joins Governor Sanders in challenging Biden’s EPA overreach

LITTLE ROCK – Following a joint press conference today, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued the following statement:

“During my inaugural address, I promised to stop the meddling hand of big government cold at the Mississippi. I’ve asked Attorney General Griffin to sue the EPA to get bureaucratic tyrants in Washington off Arkansans’ backs. Critical Arkansas industries – and more importantly, Arkansas workers and their families – stand to be affected by this federal overreach. The Biden Administration is threatening dozens of Arkansas businesses and thousands of Arkansas jobs. We won’t let the Biden Administration abuse their regulatory powers. We’re going to take them to court.”

Attorney General Tim Griffin added the following statement:

“Today I joined with Governor Sanders’ Department of Energy and Environment in challenging President Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency’s disapproval of Arkansas’s State Implementation Plan (‘SIP’) under the Clean Air Act. The Biden administration rejected our thoughtful SIP without giving us the opportunity to revise it. Further, their decision to disapprove was based on the impact of Arkansas emissions on the metropolitan areas of Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, a standard different than what we were originally told. The bottom line is this: the Biden administration wants to impose a one-size-fits-all federal implementation plan (‘FIP’) instead of allowing the states the opportunity to tailor their own plans to their specific needs, balancing environmental regulation with economic growth. The one-size-fits-all approach will cost Arkansas jobs and significantly impact many of our industries, including energy, construction, steel production and manufacturing.”

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 attended graduate school at Oxford University. Griffin has served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve’s 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. 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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