By Colin A. Young
Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office moved last week to strike Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s lawsuit against legislative leaders, arguing that her office is the only legal “gatekeeper” that decides if or when disputes between branches of government require the court’s involvement.
DiZoglio brought the long-simmering issue to the state’s highest court this month by asking a single Supreme Judicial Court justice to grant her permission to hire her own legal representation through the appointment of a special assistant attorney general.
Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt on Friday allowed Campbell’s office to intervene in DiZoglio’s suit as a defendant alongside House Speaker Ron Mariano, Senate President Karen Spilka and the House and Senate clerks, according to court records. Campbell’s office also filed a motion last week to strike DiZoglio’s complaint, and that remains under the justice’s advisement.
“By statute, the attorney general is a gatekeeper empowered to determine when, if ever, the Commonwealth’s intragovernmental legal disputes require judicial resolution…There would be no gate at all were mere disagreement with the attorney general sufficient basis for a dissenting state official to initiate a lawsuit,” Campbell’s office wrote.
Court records show Campbell’s office also plans to represent Mariano, Spilka and the House and Senate clerks against DiZoglio’s lawsuit. Assistant Attorney General Anne Sterman filed an appearance on behalf of each of the named defendants and lodged the House and Senate’s official responses to DiZoglio’s court filing.
Asked for a response to Campbell’s intervention in her lawsuit, DiZoglio said she is “being blocked from the courts by a hostile attorney general whose office is fighting against us, quite literally, on behalf of the speaker and senate president.”
“AG Campbell has abdicated her duty to defend the public interest and the law—which 72% of the voters mandated. The people deserve an answer from the courts and it’s insane to witness how far AG Campbell has gone to obstruct and deny our access to justice,” the auditor said in a statement to the News Service on Monday.
In its filing, Campbell’s office says that DiZoglio’s lawsuit implicates the rarely-litigated issue of legislative privilege—an issue the high court touched upon for the first time in 217 years when it struck down an appeal from former Sen. Dean Tran in connection to state ethics law violations.
“The issue plainly is quite important to the Legislature, which is the only branch of government whose individual members are expressly granted a privilege by the Massachusetts Constitution,” Campbell’s office points out.
In an October 2025 letter to Campbell, DiZoglio contended that the “scope of our audit and the related records request do not conflict with any constitutional principles of our Commonwealth” and that neither one “violates or otherwise endangers the General Court’s freedoms…or the separation of powers doctrine.”
“We are auditing the General Court’s administrative functions, not its legislative functions. Our review of budgetary, financial and contractual records does not constitute an exercise of the General Court’s legislative powers by my office.”