Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Orders AG to Choose Sides in DiZoglio’s Audit Battle with Legislature

BY COLIN A. YOUNG

A day after signaling they wanted to see an end to the bitter back-and-forth, justices of the Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday gave Attorney General Andrea Campbell 30 days to decide whether she will represent Auditor Diana DiZoglio in her attempt to sue the Legislature.

In an order issued after 5 p.m., the court said Campbell “shall make a final determination as to the Auditor’s request for representation” within 30 days as it relates to DiZoglio’s pursuit of claims against the Legislature for alleged failure to respond to four specific requests outlined in a January 2025 memo: the official budgets for each chamber of the Legislature for fiscal years 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024; copies of official audits of each chamber for the same fiscal years; a listing of all transactions related to each chamber’s balance forward line item for those fiscal years; and a list of all monetary settlement agreements entered into by each chamber with any current or former employees or elected members during the same timeframe.

“This order moves the process forward and ensures the Attorney General must finally make a determination regarding legal representation so the public’s interest is prioritized. We are very grateful to the Supreme Judicial Court members for their timely decision,” DiZoglio said in a statement Thursday evening.

Campbell’s office said it would “expeditiously” comply with the court’s order. The AG’s office said it was “pleased that the Auditor has now provided the SJC with the clarity and commitments that we have been seeking, and that the court has entered an order holding her to those representations.”

Assistant Attorney General Anne Sterman argued during Wednesday’s hearing that DiZoglio’s office’s representation that the audit would be limited to those four matters “has been wildly inconsistent.”

The court’s Thursday evening order requires Campbell by June 6 to “file a status report regarding her decision,” including “a brief statement (without argument) regarding whether the Attorney General continues to seek a ruling on the motion to strike that is pending before this Court.”

Shannon Liss-Riordan, who represented DiZoglio before the SJC on Wednesday, said the auditor’s team hopes “to hear from the Attorney General that she will withdraw her motion to strike the complaint so that this important case can move forward, so that we may seek to enforce the will of the People.”

Though Campbell’s office has been representing House Speaker Ronald Mariano, Senate President Karen Spilka and the House and Senate clerks as her office fought to strike DiZoglio’s suit against them, it said in court Wednesday and reiterated Thursday that it will now evaluate whether outside counsel is appropriate for either or both sides in the legislative audit dispute.

“I suspect the likely outcome is that we might end up representing nobody, and the attorney general weighs in with her view of the law that, you know, lies somewhere in between the two extremes of the two parties,” Sterman said in court Wednesday.