Attorney General Todd Rokita selects dedicated
defender of liberty, James Barta, as
Indiana’s second-ever Solicitor General
Attorney General Todd Rokita selected constitutional stalwart James Barta from a national pool of top-notch attorneys as Indiana's new Solicitor General – ensuring the veteran attorney who litigated cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and argued in front of the Indiana Supreme Court, federal courts of appeals, and both federal and state courts – will now work alongside the attorney general as the chief defenders of Indiana law.
Barta is only the second Solicitor General to serve the state of Indiana, a role which oversees litigation involving constitutional challenges and other issues of vital interest to the state government. He graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., where he later taught constitutional theory. He graduated summa cum laude from Patrick Henry College, one of the top Christian conservative schools in the country.
Barta has litigated a wide variety of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, lower federal courts, and state courts. In a 2021 case before the country’s highest court, Barta helped lead litigation on United States v. Arthrex Inc. – a check on presidential appointment power.
“After a national search, we selected a Hoosier with top credentials and national experience to fill this important role. I know James Barta is the right choice for Indiana,” Attorney General Rokita said. “James is not only brilliant, he is tenacious and excited to represent Hoosiers in this new role before the highest courts of the land.”
Barta clerked for the Honorable Stephen J. Murphy, III, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, and the Honorable Raymond M. Kethledge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit before joining one of the nation’s top litigation boutique firms in Washington, D.C.
In 2017 through Ziglar v. Abbasi, Barta secured dismissal of a Bivens claim against prison officials who confined foreign nationals detained during 9/11 terrorism investigations. Also in 2017, he successfully challenged federal rules adopted to govern the nation's largest wholesale capacity market in NRG Power Mktg. LLC v. FERC. Barta in 2018 went on to successfully overturn a ruling which subjected coal ash to overreaching portions of the Clean Water Act as part of Sierra Club v. Virginia Electric & Power Co.
“I am incredibly grateful and humbled by this opportunity to serve my state and my fellow Hoosiers,” Solicitor General Barta said. "Ever since first studying our nation’s history and ideals, I have desired to advance the rule of law, preserve our system of government, and defend Americans’ liberties. It is a privilege to serve those causes in this new role.”
Barta returned to Indiana in 2022 to serve as Indiana’s Deputy Solicitor General and played a leading role in defending the constitutionality of Indiana’s laws regarding sanctuary cities, in protecting Indiana’s statutory scheme on absentee voting, and in defending its requirement for sex offenders to register with the state. Barta has been consistently praised for his creativity, excellent advocacy, and dedication to the preservation of ordered liberty.
Attorney General Todd Rokita today announced a $700 million agreement with Google in a lawsuit over Google’s anticompetitive conduct with the Google Play Store.
“When companies unlawfully monopolize markets, they cause real harm to Hoosiers,” Attorney General Rokita said. “They rob consumers of the ability to choose from a wider array of product options that would otherwise be available, and they artificially inflate the prices of the choices that remain available. This settlement demonstrates our commitment to protect consumers and hold companies accountable.”
A bipartisan group of 53 attorneys general sued Google in 2021 alleging that Google unlawfully monopolized the markets for Android app distribution and in-app payment processing. Specifically, the states claimed that Google signed anticompetitive contracts to prevent other app stores from being preloaded on Android devices, induced key app developers who might have launched rival app stores, and created technological barriers to deter consumers from directly downloading apps to their devices.
The states announced a settlement in principle on Sept. 5, 2023, and today released the finalized terms of that deal.
Google will pay $630 million in restitution, minus costs and fees, to consumers who made purchases on the Google Play Store between August 2016 and September 2023 and were harmed by Google’s anticompetitive practices. Google will pay the states an additional $70 million in penalties.
People eligible for restitution do not have to submit a claim. They will receive automatic payments through PayPal or Venmo, or they can elect to receive a check or ACH transfer. More details about that process will be forthcoming.
The agreement also requires Google to reform its business practices in the following ways:
- Give all developers the ability to allow users to pay through in-app billing systems other than Google Play Billing for at least five years.
- Allow developers to offer cheaper prices for their apps and in-app products for consumers who use alternative, non-Google billing systems for at least five years.
- Permit developers to steer consumers toward alternative, non-Google billing systems by advertising cheaper prices within their apps themselves for at least five years.
- Not enter contracts that require the Play Store to be the exclusive, pre-loaded app store on a device or home screen for at least five years.
- Allow the installation of third-party apps on Android phones from outside the Google Play Store for at least seven years.
- Revise and reduce the warnings that appear on an Android device if a user attempts to download a third-party app from outside the Google Play Store for at least 5 years.
- Maintain Android system support for third-party app stores, including allowing automatic updates, for four years.
- Not require developers to launch their app catalogs on the Play Store at the same time as they launch on other app stores for at least four years.
- Submit compliance reports to an independent monitor who will ensure that Google is not continuing its anticompetitive conduct for at least 5 years.
For much of this case, the attorneys general litigated alongside Epic Games and Match, two major app developers. Match announced a separate settlement earlier this year, while Epic Games took its case to trial. Early last week, a jury unanimously found that Google’s anticompetitive conduct violated federal antitrust laws.
Attorneys general from all 50 states participated in this lawsuit — along with attorneys general from the District of Columbia and the territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
The settlement and a related motion are attached below.
Attorney General Todd Rokita and team obtain $690,000 for Indiana in settlement with Morgan Stanley over data security incidents
Total settlements under Rokita administration near $1 billion
Attorney General Todd Rokita today announced that his team has obtained $690,000 for Indiana as part of a multistate settlement with a global financial services corporation to resolve allegations of negligent internal data security practices.
“We have taken this action because companies must be held accountable for protecting Hoosiers’ data privacy in accordance with our laws,” Attorney General Rokita said. “Our team will continue standing up for hardworking families and defending their interests and rights as consumers.”
Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC — better known simply as Morgan Stanley — allegedly compromised the personal information of its customers with a poorly executed plan of decommissioning its computer devices and a failure to erase unencrypted data in certain of those computer devices.
As far back as 2015, Morgan Stanley failed to properly dispose of devices containing its customers’ personal information by hiring a moving company with no experience in data destruction services. Morgan Stanley failed to properly monitor the outside firm’s work — which involved decommissioning thousands of hard drives and servers containing sensitive information of millions of its customers. The computer equipment, some of which contained customer data, was sold via internet auctions. Morgan Stanley learned of problems when a downstream purchaser discovered the data and called the company.
In a second incident, a records reconciliation exercise undertaken by the company during a decommissioning process revealed that 42 servers, all potentially containing unencrypted customer information, were missing. During this process, the company learned that the local devices being decommissioned may have contained unencrypted data due to a manufacturer flaw in the encryption software.
An investigation found that Morgan Stanley failed to maintain adequate vendor controls and hardware inventories — and that had these controls been in place, both data security events could have been prevented.
Indiana is one of six states — which include Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, New York and Vermont — entering into agreements with Morgan Stanley. The company has agreed to pay $6.5 million in total and to adopt a series of provisions that better protects the personal information of its consumers going forward, including:
- Maintaining a comprehensive information security program that includes regular updates that are necessary to reasonably protect the privacy, security, and confidentiality of personal information;
- Maintaining an incident response plan that documents incidents and actions taken in relation to the incidents;
- Maintaining a written policy that governs the collection, use, retention, and disposal of consumers’ personal information;
- Encrypting all personal information, whether stored or transmitted, between documents, databases, or elsewhere;
- Employing a manual process and automated tools to keep track of locations of all hardware that contains personal information;
- Maintaining a vendor risk assessment team to assess and monitor that their vendors comply with Morgan Stanley’s data security requirements.
As part of their work protecting consumers from illicit business practices, cybersecurity threats, data privacy violations and ID theft, Attorney General Rokita's team has now obtained nearly $1 billion in settlements for Hoosiers.
Settlement documents are attached.
Attorney General Todd Rokita this week co-led a 19-state coalition in defending former President Trump’s right to appear on the Colorado ballot in 2024.
“The legal effort to banish President Trump from Colorado’s ballot in 2024 smacks of the same underhanded sliminess that provoked such skepticism among Americans after the 2020 elections,” Attorney General Rokita said. “State-by-state efforts to thwart the democratic process of electing a president disenfranchises voters in other states like Indiana.”
Indiana voters have a direct interest in this case, Attorney General Rokita added.
“If any state prohibits a legitimate presidential candidate from appearing on their ballot, that action would serve to squelch the voices of voters from every other state who supported that candidate,” Attorney General Rokita said. “Hoosiers cannot tolerate such an assault on democracy and election integrity.”
Attorney General Rokita and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey led a 19-state amicus brief calling upon the Colorado Supreme Court to dismiss a case challenging Trump's eligibility to appear on that state's ballot. The brief asserts that the Constitution gives Congress, not courts, authority to decide who is eligible to run for federal office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“We need to protect the integrity of our elections, and actions like this undermine the right of the citizens to choose who they want to represent them in every level of government,” Attorney General Morrisey said. “This is a very simple argument: Congress gets to decide on matters like this.”
The 19-state brief is here: 2023 11 29 States Amicus Brief.pdf
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