Dana Nessel

Dana Michelle Nessel (born April 19, 1969) is an American politician and lawyer serving as the 54th Attorney General of Michigan since January 2019.

She is a member of the Democratic Party.

Nessel is the second openly lesbian woman elected attorney general of a state in the United States (after Maura Healey) and the first openly LGBT person elected to statewide office in Michigan.

She is also the first Jewish person elected Attorney General of Michigan.

She is Jewish and was raised in West Bloomfield and graduated from West Bloomfield High School in 1987, where she played soccer and was named All-State.

She earned her bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Michigan in 1990 and her Juris Doctor from Wayne State University Law School in 1994.

While in college, she also performed standup comedy for several years.

While in law school, Nessel was an intern in the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office.

After graduating, she worked as an assistant prosecutor in Wayne County for eleven years.

She was the primary attorney on over 1,665 cases dealing with homicides, armed robberies, child abuse, sex crimes, carjackings and drug crimes.

She is the first Democrat to serve as attorney general since Jennifer Granholm left the office in 2003, sixteen years earlier.

Nessel immediately withdrew Michigan from eight federal lawsuits initiated by Schuette involving the separation of church and state, LGBTQ discrimination, environmental protection, and abortion.

After a rise of hate crimes in Michigan for two years in a row, Nessel launched a Hate Crimes Unit within the Criminal Division of the Department of Attorney General.

Before Nessel took office, the Michigan Department of Attorney General did not have any personnel assigned solely to the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes.

Nessel launched a new Conviction Integrity Unit within the Department of Attorney General's Criminal Appellate Division.

The unit investigates credible claims of innocence and rectifies wrongful convictions.

To do this, officials work with county prosecutors, law enforcement officials, defense attorneys, and innocence clinic projects.

Under her Consumer Protection Division, Nessel launched the state's first Payroll Fraud Enforcement Unit to investigate Michigan establishments that illegally misclassify workers or withhold wages and benefits.

She also established the Department's Auto Insurance Fraud Unit, which received over 3,000 cases in four months.

Keeping her promise to protect and defend consumers and ratepayers, Nessel saved utility customers $3.6 million after intervening in SEMCO Energy's gas recovery plan case.

In 2005, Nessel opened her own legal firm, Nessel and Kessel Law, where she handled criminal defense cases, civil rights actions, family law matters, and general tort litigation.

In 2014, Nessel successfully argued for the plaintiffs in DeBoer v. Snyder, which challenged Michigan's ban on the statewide legal recognition of same-sex marriage; the case was eventually combined with others and appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States as Obergefell v. Hodges, which led to the nationwide legal recognition of same-sex marriage.

While in private practice, she successfully represented the plaintiffs in DeBoer v. Snyder (2014).

In 2016, she founded Fair Michigan, a nonprofit organization that works to prosecute hate crimes against the LGBT community.

Nessel was born in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, the daughter of Martin and Sandra Nessel.

In 2018, Nessel won the Democratic Party nomination for Michigan Attorney General over former U.S. Attorney for Western Michigan Patrick Miles Jr.. She then narrowly defeated Republican state House Speaker Tom Leonard and three other candidates in the general election.

She succeeded term-limited Republican Bill Schuette who ran unsuccessfully for the office of Governor.

Nessel was sworn into office on January 1, 2019.

She is the first openly LGBTQ person elected to statewide office in Michigan.

As of the end of 2019, Nessel has helped save Michigan utility ratepayers a combined $355,809,700.

In collaboration with the Michigan Supreme Court, Nessel launched the Michigan Elder Abuse Task Force to combat physical abuse, financial exploitation, emotional abuse, and neglect of senior citizens.

Nearly 50 different organizations including law enforcement, state agencies, the Michigan House of Representatives, Michigan Senate, Michigan Congressional delegation, and advocacy groups, have joined the task force.

The task force initiatives include requiring professional guardians to become certified, developing statutory basic rights for families, reviewing the process of a guardian removing a ward from their home, and limiting the number of wards per guardian.

Nessel started a statewide campaign to crack down on illegal robocalls targeting Michigan residents.

This campaign includes initiatives to educate the public, toughen enforcement, and update state law.

As of March 2020, over 2,400 caller complaints of illegal robocalls had been received by Nessel's office.

Additionally, Nessel joined a bipartisan group of state attorneys general in filing a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in Barr v. American Assn. of Political Consultants, Inc.; the AGs argued in favor of preserving the anti-robocall provisions of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

On March 2, 2023, Nessel announced that she was among several Jewish government officials targeted in antisemitic threats made on social media by a heavily armed Michigan man.

Jack Eugene Carpenter III, of Tipton, Michigan, was charged in federal court with transmitting an interstate threat, a felony.

Carpenter was accused of tweeting from Texas in February 2023: "I'm heading back to Michigan now threatening to carry out the punishment of death to anyone that is jewish in the Michigan govt if they don't leave, or confess."