Assistant Attorney General - Agriculture & Health Division, Olympia

Assistant Attorney General

The Agriculture and Health Division (AHD) of the Washington State Attorney General's Office seeks to fill an Assistant Attorney General (AAG) position. The AHD is a team of 16 Assistant Attorneys General and 9 professional staff located at the AGO's main Capitol Campus location in Olympia, WA. We have a wide range of backgrounds, value diversity, and work in a collegial, collaborative, and flexible environment.

Our work touches most aspects of Washingtonians' lives by helping to protect and promote public health and our state's economic, cultural, and environmental resources. Our primary client agencies are the Department of Health, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, and we advise numerous related boards and commissions. We provide client advice and litigate cases in a wide array of areas with real world impacts, including environmental and public health;

licensing and oversight of health care providers and facilities; disease prevention and control; affordable housing and housing development; homelessness prevention and response; broadband expansion; renewable energy, climate change, and environmental justice; community and economic development; historic and archaeological resource preservation; and animal, commodity, food, and plant safety.

This position is for an attorney who will provide client advice and administrative and civil litigation services to various client agencies and programs. The mix of client programs for this position will depend on the division's and clients' needs and the successful candidate's experience and interests. This AAG will represent health care provider and facility licensing programs administered by the Department of Health and related boards and commissions and may provide counsel to programs within the Department of Agriculture.

The AAG in this position may also represent programs within the Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, with the potential for the right candidate to eventually take on a lead counsel role for the agency.

AHD has a wide variety of client programs, and there are regular opportunities to change assignments to explore new areas and develop new skills. The successful candidate will work directly with their agency clients from the start, with extensive support from their supervisors and colleagues.

The position will advise clients on common agency issues related to statutory and regulatory authority, legislation, rule making, public records, Open Public Meetings Act, and other matters. Examples of client advice issues include:

• Drafting agency request legislation to provide the Secretary of Health authority to issue prescriptions and recommendations for vaccines.
• Drafting and advising on implementation of rules requiring hospitals to provide charity care to indigent patients.
• Advising a health care profession commission on what care their licensees may provide via telehealth.
• Establishing a safe medication return program to ensure responsible disposal of potentially harmful prescription drugs.
• Implementing a newly created Compost Reimbursement Program.
• Advising on an agency's authority to enter private property for the control of harmful pests.

The position will engage in administrative litigation primarily before the Department of Health's Adjudicative Services Unit, with occasional appeals to state courts, and, less commonly, defend agencies against original actions in state and federal courts. Litigation examples include:

• Taking enforcement action to revoke the license of a mental health counselor who subjects a patient to sexual misconduct.
• Defending against a challenge to the Department of Health's guidance interpreting the law to require hospitals to provide charity care regardless of a patient's state of residence.
• Filing an action in superior court to enforce the Department of Health's order revoking a hotel's transient accommodation license for unsanitary conditions.
• Filing an administrative action to revoke a pesticide applicator's license for spraying harmful pesticides on farm workers.
• Initiating enforcement action to…