A Farewell from Gwendolyn Cooley, former NAAG Antitrust Task Force Chair and Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General
**Gwendolyn posted on LinkedIn announcing her departure from the Wisconsin Attorney General’s Office after twenty years of service. Her post celebrated the bipartisan work of her talented antitrust colleagues, laying out some of the core reasons why the attorney general antitrust community is so dynamic and successful in meeting the ever-changing legal landscape. The NAAG Center for Consumer Protection invited her to expand upon her original farewell post for our Article of the Month.
To my much-adored, soon-to-be former colleagues, since I started on a cold January day in 2005, being the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust at the Wisconsin Department of Justice has been the single most important thing I could do with my time and talents. I have served four Attorneys General, two Republicans, and two Democrats, including my current boss, Attorney General Josh Kaul.
From my very first case against the makers of Paxil, my two cases challenging Dairy mergers that resulted in plant divestitures, the long-running Suboxone case I led for 8 years and that we settled last year for $102.5 million, and the T-Mobile Merger challenge, and all of our Big Tech cases, working on these high-profile cases was such a privilege, and I always tried to do justice for the Wisconsin taxpayer. That is what we do as public servants and what makes us so unique. When we walk into America’s courtrooms, judges know we are not there to line our pockets, we are there to do justice: whatever comes of the decision, win or lose. And while I very much preferred to win, and still think we were right about T-Mobile, I always knew that the fact that we do not always win is evidence that our system is fair and works the way it was intended. Justice, not victory.
Since 2021, I have had the honor to lead my state antitrust enforcer colleagues across the country as Chair of the NAAG Multistate Antitrust Task Force. When Attorney General Letitia James and then-Attorney General Doug Peterson interviewed me, I told them that my goal was to position the states to be at the forefront of the antitrust revolution, and it is not the revolution that you think.
It is the revolution of Attention.
I sit on planes next to people who want to tell me about their antitrust problems. As you antitrust practitioners know, this never happened before. As you non-antitrust lawyers know, it used to be a thing that no one understood, or- if we are honest- cared about. This is not the case anymore. Competition is part of our everyday lexicon.
My goal when I became Chair of the Antitrust Task Force, and I think we have succeeded, was to make sure that I was out there raising the profile of the states to give us the credit for being the aggressive, engaged, innovative antitrust thought leaders that we are. Big Tech? We have sued them for years in countless different ways: from suing Apple about eBooks in the twenty-teens, to the latest case against Apple a few months ago. And do not get me started on our five cases against Google. Big Pharma? We never stopped suing them- and have prosecuted dozens of successful antitrust cases against Big Pharma for their anticompetitive practices, with millions of dollars of recovery to our states and citizens.
In the one hundred days I was on the road last year, I relentlessly advocated for the states. I gave speeches to think tanks, law firms, law schools, antitrust practitioners, businesses, conservative groups, and liberal groups- and while (inconveniently for me) no speech was ever the same, the theme never varied: The attorneys general stand united in our belief that competition matters. We may not agree on every aspect of competition law, but fundamentally- we want to protect competition. I argued that it should not just be the case that businesses and consumers turn only to the federal antitrust agencies for their views on antitrust. On the ground, the attorneys general are proving that we are a force to be reckoned with: with our challenges to mergers, and suing the NCAA, and taking on PBMs- I discussed how all of these actions demonstrate the attorneys generals’ significant commitment to enforcement of the antitrust laws.
However, it does not do any good to talk a big game if you cannot deliver. As Chair of the Task Force, it was my job to ensure that the states were poised and ready to deliver on what we promised publicly. We created trainings- including the Lunch and Learn Series and Antitrust 101; instituted a mentorship program, revised our enforcement manual, created new committees to ensure that we were up to speed on legislative initiatives in our own states and around the word and to ensure that we were functioning smoothly as a Task Force.
We also made sure that those folks who went above and beyond were recognized for those achievements, for both the Chair’s Writing Award, created by my predecessor as Chair, Sarah Allen; and in the Awards of Merit, awarded in the Spring for those staff whose peers felt that they had contributed significantly to the Task Force, through committee work, as a rising star, or for their distinguished service.
After we delivered on my first goal: a raised profile, my second goal was to represent ALL the attorneys general. I relished the challenge of comfortably articulating both sides of an argument about ESG or Non-Competes or anything else the attorneys general came up with. I focused on finding practical problems and solutions amidst the rhetoric.
Why did I enjoy that so much? Because our inherent diversity is our greatest strength.
This is what makes the attorneys general both so unique and so formidable. We are unique in the world that we come together as separate sovereigns with often diametrically opposed views and proceed jointly in the same court and in the same case. Literally, no one else does this. And while this can be exhausting – if there are opposing views on how a case might be perceived, we have discussed them ad nauseum – but it is also exhilarating. When I explained to the judge in the Suboxone case how I represented 42 attorneys general in court that day, and what our process was to sign off on something like a motion for summary judgment or a settlement, and that on existential matters we have Unanimous Agreement, he was shocked. “How? How are you possibly getting Florida and California and New York and Pennsylvania and Arizona and Utah and Tennessee and Vermont and everyone else to agree with Wisconsin?” Trust me, your honor, I can do it.
And we did.
I am so proud of all the work that I have done in my nearly 20 years with the Attorney General of Wisconsin, and in the last three years for the Multistate Antitrust Task Force.
While I do not yet know where my next challenge will be, I hope that it will bring me as much excitement and joy as this job has over the last twenty years.
To my fellow AAGs and to the attorneys general – it has been an honor to serve you, and may you never forget the power and uniqueness of the formidable force that you exercise together through the National Association of Attorneys General.
