39 Facts About Mark Brnovich

Mark Brnovich was born on 1966 and is an American attorney and politician who was the 26th Attorney General of Arizona from 2015 to 2023.

Mark Brnovich's parents were Serbs who had immigrated from former Yugoslavia, his father from Montenegro, and his mother from Split, Croatia.

Mark Brnovich has said that his mother emigrated to the United States to escape communism.

Mark Brnovich earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Arizona State University and a Juris Doctor from the University of San Diego School of Law.

Mark Brnovich served as a Command Staff Judge Advocate with the Army National Guard.

Mark Brnovich has worked as the Director of the Center for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute, as Assistant US Attorney for the District of Arizona, as a prosecutor with the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, and as Assistant Attorney General of Arizona.

From 2005 to 2007, Mark Brnovich was a lobbyist for the Corrections Corporation of America.

Mark Brnovich was appointed the director of the Arizona Department of Gaming in 2009 and kept the position through 2013.

Mark Brnovich resigned from the Department of Gaming in 2013 to run for Attorney General of Arizona in the 2014 election.

In 2018, Mark Brnovich announced that Volkswagen had agreed to settle a consumer fraud lawsuit with the State of Arizona for $40 million over its diesel emissions scandal.

In October 2020, Mark Brnovich announced a $71 million settlement with Ticketmaster that provided refunds to consumers who purchased tickets to live events in Arizona that were cancelled, postponed, or rescheduled due to COVID-19.

In 2021, Mark Brnovich petitioned the US Supreme Court to reverse decisions of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in two death penalty cases.

Shortly after taking office, Mark Brnovich sued the Barack Obama administration for its Clean Power Plan, a carbon emission reduction initiative intended to reduce climate change.

In 2016, Mark Brnovich challenged a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to impose a more restrictive National Ambient Air Quality Standard to improve air quality.

In 2017, Mark Brnovich filed an amicus brief in support of ExxonMobil after the company was issued a subpoena by the Attorney General of New York in an investigation into whether the company had misled investors about the risks posed by climate change.

Mark Brnovich's brief defended ExxonMobil and claimed that there was no scientific consensus on climate change.

In 2021, Brnovich joined 11 other states in suing the Biden administration for calculating a social cost caused by climate change.

In 2018, The Washington Post reported that Mark Brnovich was investigating Google for its alleged practice of recording users' tracking data even after a user opted out of the location tracking function.

Mark Brnovich opposed the Affordable Care Act and signed on to lawsuits seeking to invalidate the law.

Mark Brnovich argued that the border wall was needed because of the adverse environmental impact that migrants might have.

On September 8,2017, Mark Brnovich sued the Arizona Board of Regents, saying the entity in charge of setting tuition for Arizona universities had "dramatically and unconstitutionally" increased tuition and fees over the last 15 years.

In 2019, Mark Brnovich sued Arizona State University and the Arizona Board of Regents over a real estate deal that he alleged was illegal because it violated the Arizona Constitution's Gift Clause.

Mark Brnovich alleged that a hotel project in downtown Tempe was improperly given a tax exemption because it was being built on tax-exempt university property.

In 2021, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled that Mark Brnovich had to pay almost $1 million of legal fees to the Arizona Board of Regents.

In 2015, Mark Brnovich backed a Louisiana amicus brief before the Supreme Court which argued that states should be allowed to prohibit same-sex marriage.

In 2016, Mark Brnovich announced that Arizona would join ten other states in a Texas lawsuit against the Barack Obama administration which had directed public schools to allow students to use bathrooms and showers based on their gender identity or risk losing Title IX funding.

In 2017 and 2018, Mark Brnovich defended the right of businesses to refuse to serve same-sex couples when the act would otherwise infringe upon a business owner's religious beliefs.

In 2019, Mark Brnovich supported efforts to repeal a 1991 Arizona law that prohibited "promotion of a homosexual lifestyle" in public schools, after the law was challenged as unconstitutional.

In November 2015, Mark Brnovich filed a special action with the Arizona Supreme Court to remove Republican Susan Bitter Smith from her position on the Arizona Corporation Commission over allegations that she had violated state conflict-of-interest laws because of her work in the private sector involving cable companies that are overseen by the office she was elected to.

The fintech sandbox is administered by the Arizona Attorney General's Office and was authored and championed by Mark Brnovich, who promoted the initiative as a way to advance fintech start-ups and reduce regulatory hurdles to fintech.

Mark Brnovich later responded to the Department of Justice and warned the federal government to not intervene in Arizona's audit.

In March 2021, Brnovich personally argued on behalf of Arizona in Brnovich v Democratic National Committee, where he asked the Supreme Court to uphold Arizona election laws that restricted ballot harvesting and threw out votes that were cast in the wrong precinct.

Mark Brnovich argued that these laws were needed to "safeguard election integrity" and that the Arizona laws are "commonplace election administration provisions used by Arizona and dozens of other states".

From 2017 to 2018, Mark Brnovich was the Chairman of the Conference of Western Attorneys General, a non-partisan organization of Attorneys General.

Mark Brnovich chose to focus his Chair's Initiative on cyber security and data privacy.

From 2017 to 2018, Mark Brnovich was appointed to Protecting America's Seniors: Attorneys General United Against Elder Abuse, a bipartisan group of state attorneys general The initiative was established to focus on strengthening efforts nationwide to combat elder abuse.

In December 2017, Mark Brnovich was recognized by the Arizona Capitol Times as a "Leader of the Year" in the category of Public Safety.

In June 2021, Mark Brnovich launched a campaign for the Republican primary for the United States Senate in the 2022 election.

Mark Brnovich is married to Susan Brnovich, a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Arizona.