Mark Brnovich

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

A member of the Republican Party, he was an unsuccessful candidate for its nomination in the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Arizona.

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

Brnovich was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1966.

His parents were Serbs who had immigrated from former Yugoslavia, his father from Montenegro, and his mother from Split, Croatia.

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

Brnovich and his family moved to Arizona when he was young.

They are members of a local Serbian Orthodox parish in Phoenix.

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.

While at Arizona State, Brnovich was a member of Sigma Pi fraternity.

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

He has worked as the Director of the Center for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute, as Assistant U.S. 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, Brnovich was a lobbyist for the Corrections Corporation of America.

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

The settlement impacted 33,000 Arizonans who purchased certain cars between 2009 and 2014.

According to Brnovich, Arizona was the first state to obtain restitution directly for consumers as part of a settlement with GM related to faulty ignition switch claims.

GM previously settled claims with 49 other states, but Arizona filed their own lawsuit focusing on consumer restitution.

Under that lawsuit, Arizona would have received $2 million and the money would not have gone to consumers.

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

He defeated incumbent Tom Horne in the August Republican Party primary election and Felecia Rotellini in the general election.

Arizona did not carry out an execution between 2014 and 2022.

He was inaugurated on January 5, 2015.

In August 2016, the Arizona Attorney General's office took action in the Maricopa County Superior Court and filed to intervene in over 1,000 lawsuits initiated by an advocacy group that flooded courts with duplicative disability access lawsuits targeting mostly small businesses.

By intervening, the Attorney General's office made itself a part of the cases and argued that the plaintiffs' group, Advocates for Individuals with Disabilities, exceeded its legal authority and was not allowed to collect fees on these types of lawsuits.

In September 2016, a judge agreed to allow the Attorney General's office to intervene and consolidated the cases while also preventing Advocates for Individuals with Disabilities from filing new lawsuits.

In December 2016, the office filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuits and a judge granted the request in February 2017, dismissing over 1,000 of the lawsuits.

After the ruling, Brnovich said "Arizona is not going to tolerate serial litigators who try to shake down small hardworking businesses by exploiting the disability community."

As attorney general, Brnovich undertook efforts in the area of consumer protection and advocacy, including the opioid epidemic.

Notable consumer settlements included a $4.65 million settlement in 2017 with Theranos, Inc. to resolve an Arizona Consumer Fraud Act case over allegations that the company's advertisements misrepresented the accuracy and reliability of more than 1.5 million blood tests sold between 2013 and 2016.

Under the settlement, the 76,000 Arizonans who received a blood test over that time period received a full refund (averaging $60.92) and Theranos was also banned from owning, operating, or directing a lab in Arizona for two years.

In 2018, the state announced that a consumer fraud settlement had been reached with General Motors ("GM") that would pay an additional $6.28 million in payments to Arizona consumers as part of claims related to GM's installation of faulty ignition switches.

In 2018, 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.

The settlement directed $10.5 million to Arizona consumers who had purchased certain Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche vehicles for restitution, $20 million to the state's budget to help fund K-12 education, and the remaining money for consumer protection and enforcement purposes.

Arizona was the only state to obtain additional restitution on behalf of consumers as a result of state enforcement actions.

In a 2019 letter to Governor Doug Ducey, Brnovich called for a resumption of executions in Arizona, writing, "Those who commit the ultimate crime deserve the ultimate punishment."

In 2021, Brnovich announced that the state would seek warrants of execution for two death row inmates who had exhausted their appeals.

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

Both inmates were executed at the Florence State Prison in 2022.

In October 2020, 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.

The settlement covered 650 Arizona events and allowed consumers to receive a full refund if their event was impacted by COVID-19 and they purchased their tickets before March 14, 2020.