Josh Hawley
Joshua David Hawley is an American politician and attorney serving as the senior United States senator from Missouri, a seat he has held since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, Hawley served as the 42nd attorney general of Missouri from 2017 to 2019, before defeating two-term incumbent Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in the 2018 election. He was reelected in 2024.
Born in Springdale, Arkansas, to a banker and a teacher, Hawley graduated from Stanford University in 2002 and Yale Law School in 2006. After being a law clerk to Judge Michael W. McConnell and Chief Justice John Roberts, he worked as a lawyer, first in private practice from 2008 to 2011 and then for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty from 2011 to 2015. Before being elected Missouri attorney general, he was also an associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, and a faculty member of the conservative Blackstone Legal Fellowship.
As Missouri attorney general, Hawley initiated several high-profile lawsuits and investigations, including a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, an investigation into Missouri governor Eric Greitens, and a lawsuit and investigation into companies associated with the opioid epidemic. His political beliefs have been described as populist and socially conservative.
In December 2020, Hawley became the first senator to announce plans to object to the certification of Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 United States presidential election, and led efforts in the Senate to do so.
Early life and education
Joshua David Hawley was born on December 31, 1979, in Springdale, Arkansas, to banker Ronald Hawley and teacher Virginia Hawley. In 1981, the Hawleys moved to Lexington, Missouri, after Ronald joined a division of Boatmen's Bancshares there.Hawley attended Lexington Middle School and Rockhurst High School, a private Jesuit boys' prep school in Kansas City, Missouri. He graduated in 1998 as a valedictorian. According to his middle school principal, Barbara Weibling, several of Hawley's teachers thought "he was probably going to be president one day." While in high school, Hawley regularly wrote columns for his hometown newspaper, The Lexington News, about such topics as the American militia movement following the Oklahoma City bombing, media coverage of Los Angeles Police Department detective Mark Fuhrman, and affirmative action, which he opposed.
Hawley studied history at Stanford University, where his mother was an alumna. He graduated in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with highest honors and Phi Beta Kappa membership. He studied under professor David M. Kennedy, who later contributed the foreword to Hawley's book Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness. Kennedy said Hawley stood out in a school "which is overstuffed with overachieving and very talented young people" and called him "arguably the most gifted student I taught in 50 years".
In the summer of 2000, Hawley was an intern at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. After spending ten months in London teaching at St Paul's School from 2002 to 2003, Hawley returned to the U.S. to attend Yale Law School, graduating in 2006 with a Juris Doctor degree. The Kansas City Star reported that Hawley's classmates regarded him as "politically ambitious and a deeply religious conservative". At Yale, Hawley was articles editor of the Yale Law Journal, editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review, and president of the school's Federalist Society chapter.
Early career
Hawley spent two years as a law clerk after law school, clerking first for Judge Michael W. McConnell of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit from 2006 to 2007, then for Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court from 2007 to 2008. While at the Supreme Court, Hawley met his future wife, Erin Morrow, now known as Erin Hawley, a fellow Yale Law graduate who was also clerking for Roberts.After his clerkships, Hawley worked in private practice as an appellate litigator at the law firm Hogan & Hartson from 2008 to 2011. In 2011, Hawley returned to Missouri and became an associate professor at the University of Missouri Law School, where he taught constitutional law, constitutional theory, legislation, and torts. From 2011 to 2015 Hawley was with Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. At Becket, he wrote briefs and gave legal advice in the Supreme Court cases Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, decided in 2012, and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, decided in 2014.
2016 Missouri attorney general campaign
Hawley launched his campaign for attorney general of Missouri on July 23, 2015. Of the $9.2 million raised for the campaign, $4.4 million was provided by David Humphreys, CEO of Joplin-based Tamko Building Products. On August 2, 2016, Hawley defeated Kurt Schaefer in the Republican primary with 64% of the vote. He defeated Democrat Teresa Hensley in the general election with 58.5% of the vote. During the campaign, Hawley criticized "career politicians" who were "climbing the ladder" from one position to another. This was later a focus of bipartisan criticism of him because he ran for the U.S. Senate only two years later. When elected, Hawley became the state's first Republican attorney general since 1988.Attorney general of Missouri (2017–2019)
Hawley was sworn in as attorney general on January 9, 2017, by Missouri Supreme Court chief justice Patricia Breckenridge.Death of Tory Sanders
On May 5, 2017, Tory Sanders, a Black motorist who had taken a wrong turn in Tennessee, ran out of gas in rural Mississippi County, Missouri. He had gotten lost and was confused; he asked a gas station attendant to call the police for assistance. Deputies responded and put him in protective custody in the county jail. His mental condition deteriorated further and he resisted when they tried to move him to a medical facility. Sheriff Cory Hutcheson led jail staff who repeatedly pepper-sprayed and Tasered Sanders throughout the day. Hutcheson eventually led a team of cops and jailers into the cell and swarmed Sanders, who went into cardiac arrest and died.In an unrelated case, Hutcheson pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2019 to six months in federal prison for unrelated crimes: wire fraud and identity theft related to illegal tracking of some 200 private cellphone users. He resigned after his plea and can no longer work as a law enforcement officer.
In 2017 Hawley determined that those who had assaulted Sanders had not intended his death, and did not file murder charges. Black lawmakers and the NAACP's Missouri chapter criticized Hawley for his handling of Sanders's death and failure to prosecute, believing he did not find justice for Sanders. No one could be held criminally accountable for Sanders's death.
Following the murder of George Floyd while in custody of Minneapolis police in 2020, interest in Sanders's case revived. Activists hoped that Eric Schmitt, the new state attorney general, would file charges. In February 2021, he chose not to do so. The three-year statute of limitations had expired for manslaughter, and he said he believed there was insufficient evidence to support charges of first- or second-degree murder.
Opioid manufacturer lawsuit and investigation
In June 2017, Hawley announced that Missouri had filed suit in state court against three major drug companies—Endo Health Solutions, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and Purdue Pharma—for allegedly hiding the danger of prescription painkillers and contributing to the opioid epidemic. The state argued that the companies violated Missouri consumer protection and Medicaid laws. The damages sought were among the largest in state history, on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars.In August 2017, Hawley announced that he had opened an investigation into seven opioid distributors: Allergan, Depomed, Insys, Mallinckrodt, Mylan, Pfizer, and Teva Pharmaceuticals. In October 2017, he expanded his investigation into three additional pharmaceutical companies—AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson Corporation—that are the three largest U.S. opioid distributors.
Rape kit audit
On October 29, 2017, the Columbia Missourian published an exposé describing a large backlog of untested rape kits in Missouri and the state's failure to address the backlog, although rape survivors and law enforcement agencies had urged such actions. On November 29, Hawley announced a statewide audit of the number of untested rape kits. The results were made public in May 2018; there were nearly 5,000 such kits. In August 2018, One Nation, a 501 nonprofit connected to Republican campaign strategist Karl Rove, ran commercials giving Hawley credit for identifying the problem, a claim The St. Louis Post-Dispatch labeled misleading, because he had been responding to issues raised by law enforcement, survivors and advocates, rather than originating an investigation.In September 2020, his successor, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, announced that of the 16 rape kit tests that were consequently uploaded to the national DNA database, 11 revealed the names of known criminals, and were referred for possible prosecution.
Investigations into tech companies
In November 2017, Hawley opened an investigation into whether Google's business practices violated state consumer protection and anti-trust laws. The investigation was focused on what data Google collects from users of its services, how it uses content providers' content, and whether its search engine results are biased.In April 2018, after the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Hawley announced that his office had issued a subpoena to Facebook related to how the company shares its users' data. The investigation sought to determine whether Facebook properly handles its users' sensitive data or collects more data than it publicly admits.