Attorney General Letitia James attends joint press briefing with Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Gov. Kathy Hochul and elected officials and activists standing up to federal ICE overreach at the governor’s office in New York, NY, on Aug. 12, 2026 (Photo by Lev Radin/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images).
A federal judge in New York on Thursday delivered a victory for New York Attorney General Letitia James in a legal challenge brought by a far-right, anti-immigrant website accusing her office of retaliation.
In a 26-page memorandum decision and order, U.S. District Judge Mae D’Agostino, a Barack Obama appointee, dismissed the lawsuit in full because it relies on an improper federal challenge to state law enforcement — dismissal under the Younger abstention doctrine.
“Simply put, Plaintiff seeks declaratory and injunctive relief that would cause this Court to interfere with the ongoing Civil Enforcement Action,” the opinion reads at one point.
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In June 2025, the VDARE Foundation filed the lawsuit in the Northern District of New York, alleging a series of First Amendment and equal protection violations over subpoenas seeking information about its finances, corporate governance, and regulatory compliance.
“VDARE engages in political speech at the very heart of First Amendment protection: it criticizes government policy that appears to demonstrate incompetence and even outright dishonesty,” the lawsuit reads. “James and the several attorneys in her office seek to crush this criticism through the abuse of state power.”
The group followed up with a bid for a temporary restraining order in December 2025 — directly asking the district court to effectively stop James from taking regulatory action against VDARE while the lawsuit progresses. A few months before that, in September 2025, James brought a state-based civil enforcement action against VDARE, accusing the group’s owners of raiding its own corporate assets — and misusing donor funds — to buy a castle in West Virginia.
The day after the request for injunctive relief was filed, D’Agostino declined a request for expedited consideration.
The judge overseeing the lawsuit also issued a stark warning to VDARE that various legal doctrines were likely to work against the group in the end “because both the subpoenas at issue and the enforcement proceeding are akin to a criminal prosecution.”
But D’Agostino allowed the proceedings to go forward and gave James and her office permission to file a combined motion to dismiss and motion in opposition to VDARE’s injunction request.
In January, James filed that 38-page omnibus motion.
“This action asserts constitutional claims of retaliation, selective enforcement, and conspiracy against Defendants following [the attorney general’s] lawful investigation of, and subsequent legal action initiated against, VDARE,” the motion to dismiss reads.
To hear James tell it, VDARE was aiming for “a third bite at the apple on the matter of retaliatory animus and targeting” after previously suing and losing to James in federal court in 2022 and unsuccessfully challenging subpoenas in Empire State court in 2024.
Now, D’Agostino has decided the issues emphatically in James’ favor.
“In sum, the Civil Enforcement Action was initiated to sanction Plaintiff,” the order reads. “Defendant James initiated the action pursuant to her statutory authority (as the Attorney General routinely does), and there was an investigation which culminated in the filing of the formal complaint in the Civil Enforcement Action.”
The judge says a federal “[i]ntrusion” into the state’s efforts “unduly interferes” with “legitimate activities” and can also “readily be interpreted as reflecting negatively upon the state courts’ ability to enforce constitutional principles.”
The court also had harsh words for VDARE’s arguments, calling them “both factually incorrect and legally meritless.”
Specifically, D’Agostino chastises the group for how its complaint “broadly alleges injuries suffered as a result of a conspiracy-laced investigation and abuse of process.”
But ultimately, none of the merits arguments mattered — except insofar as what those arguments concern at a basic level.
And, to that end, the judge saw no reason to give VDARE a chance to make better arguments.
“Because the defects in Plaintiff’s complaint—i.e. that Plaintiff improperly seeks this Court’s intervention in ongoing state court proceedings—cannot be cured with an amendment, the Court declines to grant Plaintiff leave to amend,” the opinion goes on.
The post Letitia James beats ‘factually incorrect and legally meritless’ challenge from far-right website over civil enforcement subpoenas and alleged administrative harassment first appeared on Law & Crime.
