AG Jackson talks first major action in office, challenges to Trump Administration orders

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Thursday, January 30, 2025
NC Attorney General Jeff Jackson details plans for first term
"The Attorney General is supposed to have the backs of the people of the state."

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- In his first one-on-one interview with ABC11 since taking office, newly sworn-in North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson explained why he chose to expand a lawsuit against a company called RealPage as his first major action in office and talked about his reasoning behind taking legal action on behalf of North Carolina against the President Donald Trump's Administration.

Jackson explained that he chose to expand an existing lawsuit against software company RealPage to six landlords in an effort to change the way they operate to avoid price-gouging renters.

"This is something that impacts tens of thousands of North Carolinians. It's a really serious case. It has to do with rents that we believe have been unlawfully raised. There's a piece of artificial intelligence software that gets a lot of landlords to feed into it, all of this data: the amount that they're charging, the occupancy, various trends," Jackson said. "Then it shares all of that data with landlords basically in the form of saying, here's the most that you can charge for rent given all of this data that you're giving us. It's data that is designed and software that's designed to charge as high a rent as they can."

Jackson said these six landlords control more than 70,000 units in the Triangle region, making up roughly one-third of one and two-bedroom apartments in the area. They also have a significant presence in the Charlotte metro region. Jackson called their footprint in North Carolina "enormous".

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"The Attorney General is supposed to have the backs of the people of the state. This was clearly a case in which tens of thousands of people were being taken advantage of," Jackson said when asked why he chose this particular action as his first major move in office. "We wanted to send a message, we're not going to let this happen."

Jackson also joined many other states across the country when filing a lawsuit against the Trump Administration for his executive order issued to end birthright citizenship in the United States, Jackson citing this as a direct violation to the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

He also filed legal action with other states to challenge the freeze on federal funding that the Trump Administration communicated in a memo earlier in the week. Though the memo stated in a footnote that federal funds going straight to individuals in America would not be impacted by this, and explained that only federal funds that didn't fall in line with Trump's executive orders would be frozen temporarily, it was not immediately clear exactly which funding would be paused.

"We didn't know what it meant when it first came out, but the maximal version of it is really bad for our state. We rely very heavily and have a lot of programs Western North Carolina relies very heavily on federal funds, particularly right now. One of the last things I did as a member of Congress was vote to pass a budget that sent billions of dollars in part to western North Carolina. The notion that all of that would come to a screeching halt because of this directive, which clearly wasn't thought through as far as the consequences of its actions are unacceptable," Jackson said.

"We have, we believe, won our first court battle that's going to give us a temporary pause. We're going to have the fuller court battle here in a couple of weeks," Jackson said, referring to a federal judge's decision to pause this freeze at least until Monday at 5:00 p.m.

On Wednesday, the Trump Administration rescinded the memo that initially communicated the freeze, but White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later clarified that President Trump's order remains "in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented," with a statement from the administration later saying the freeze aims to "root out waste, fraud, and abuse."

"We're here to make sure that we're not going to just allow confusion. If they're going to be orders from the administration, that's fine. They have lawful rights to do things like that. They have to be thoughtful. They have to comply with the law. You have to care about what the actual consequences are going to be," Jackson said.

Ultimately, Jackson wanted to make clear that his role is nonpartisan.

"It's to be your shield against people who bear you ill will, whether it is criminals or scammers, folks coming after your pocketbook," Jackson said, adding he's not here to play politics.

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