Attorney General Labrador can’t seem to resist conflicts of interest

By Jim Jones
Reader Contributor

Attorney General Raúl Labrador is embroiled once more in a conflict of interest lawsuit. He is now accused of using his position to bias voters against Proposition 1, the initiative designed to strike Idaho’s total abortion ban. The proponents of the initiative took him to court last year, claiming he had written deceptive ballot titles for the initiative. The Idaho Supreme Court ruled that the short title was improper and ordered Labrador to revise it. He is now accused of misleading voters with confusing language about the effect of their vote.

Regardless of how the court rules, the crux of the problem is Labrador’s glaring conflict of interest. His primary objective in office has been to rack up political points by trying to stamp out abortion in every form. He fought against a federal law requiring emergency care for pregnant women in crisis. He fought to criminalize doctors who refer women out of state to obtain abortion care. That did not end well because after two years of litigation, he agreed he was wrong. 

The state had to pay $400,000 in attorney fees for his obstinance. 

He teamed up with a Christian Nationalist group, Alliance Defending Freedom, in a Texas lawsuit to ban Mifepristone and Misoprostol, two drugs used for early termination of a pregnancy. That suit was dismissed for being filed in the wrong state, so he joined a similar suit in Missouri to limit Mifepristone.

And that is just a taste of Labrador’s bias. He has fully embraced the 2026 Platform of the Idaho Republican Party. Article 14 of the platform states: “human personhood begins at the moment of fertilization … the act of abortion is murder … We support the criminalization of all murders by abortion within the state’s jurisdiction.”

That includes “persons conceived in rape and incest.” 

That’s about as far-reaching as you could get. No wonder the proponents of Prop 1 are skeptical of the ballot language. Idaho’s abortion laws are among the strictest in the country. But Labrador’s over-the-top enforcement of them has endangered women and caused about 35% of Idaho’s doctors who practice obstetrics to leave the state or quit practicing. 

With that track record, it should have been clear to him that he had a clearcut conflict of interest in characterizing the effect of a vote either way on Prop 1. Every lawyer in the state, including government lawyers, must avoid conflicts of interest. Yet, Labrador has a solid track record of engaging in that prohibited conduct. 

He famously took legal action against two of his own client agencies — the Department of Health and Welfare and the Idaho Board of Education — and was removed from both cases by two different judges for his obvious conflicts of interest.

Another lawsuit brought against Labrador by proponents of the Open Primaries Initiative claimed that he wrote biased ballot titles for that measure. The Supreme Court agreed that the titles were misleading and ordered him to rewrite them. The situation could have been avoided if Labrador had recognized his evident conflict of interest. He came out publicly against that initiative beforehand and had no business drafting the titles. 

During my eight years as Idaho attorney general, conflicts occasionally arose. It was not only unethical to ignore a conflict but easily addressed by obtaining unbiased counsel to handle the matter. For instance, in 1986 then-state Sen. Jim Risch insisted on running an initiative to establish a state lottery after I told him it required a constitutional amendment instead of a mere initiative. His initiative was approved by the voters but challenged in court. I concluded it would be a conflict to defend the lawsuit. 

Instead of ignoring the conflict, I deputized a reputable Boise law firm, Hawley Troxell, to defend the suit on a pro bono basis. Labrador should have recused himself from writing the Prop 1 description because of his obvious conflict. Idaho’s respected secretary of state could have done an unbiased job on his own.

Violating conflicts of interest rules can result in substantial embarrassment to the violator, as Labrador learned last year. Ever since Idaho obtained statehood in 1890, the attorney general has served as a member of the State Land Board, but also as legal advisor for the board. Last year, for the first time in Idaho history, the board voted to obtain independent counsel. Ouch! That had to hurt. Labrador found himself on the short end of a 4-1 vote. 

Labrador claimed the board did not want to be told “no” on various issues. The dramatic change was more a matter of trust. Those closest to us usually know us best. If a client cannot trust its lawyer, or the lawyer engages in unethical conduct, the client has the right to go elsewhere for legal representation.

Jim Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran who served eight years as Idaho attorney general (1983-1991) and 12 years as justice of the Idaho Supreme Court (2005-2017). He also publishes at substack.com/@jjcommontater.