Attorney General Opinions by State: How to Find Them and What They Are Worth

Short answer: a state attorney general opinion is a written answer to a question of law, given to a public official who asked for it. Each state's attorney general publishes its own, on its own site, with its own numbering, so there is no single place to look. Start at the issuing office's opinions page (Texas, California, Florida, Washington, Georgia, Alabama and Arizona are covered below). To search across states, filter an API by the STATE_AG_OPINION corpus. Treat any opinion as persuasive authority: courts give it weight, but it does not bind them.

TL;DR

• An attorney general (AG) opinion answers a legal question for an official who is allowed to ask. In most states that means legislators, agency heads and certain local officers. Private citizens can read opinions but usually cannot request one.
• Courts are not bound by them. Washington says its formal opinions are "not binding in any way" but get "great respect." California says courts give its opinions "great weight." Arizona calls its opinions advisory.
• They are scattered. Seven states, seven sites, seven numbering schemes, and different start dates for what is online.
• Many states publish more than one type: formal opinions and informal letters (Washington, Florida), or official and unofficial series (Georgia). Cite the right one.
• To search several states in one request, call the search endpoint with corpusType: "STATE_AG_OPINION" and a list of states.

Part of our MCP and developer guide series.

What an attorney general opinion is

Every state has an attorney general, and in most of them the office answers legal questions for government officials. The answer, written up and published, is an AG opinion. It reads a lot like a short court opinion: the question, the statutes involved, an analysis, a conclusion.

Texas describes it in one line on its opinions page: "a written interpretation of existing law." The office adds that opinions cannot create new law, cannot fix unintended effects of a statute, and cannot resolve factual disputes.

Two things make them useful. They are often the only interpretation that exists for a statute no court has reached yet. And the people who ask are public officials, so the questions are practical: can a county commissioner also sit on a city council, may a school board adopt a policy, does a records law cover a committee.

Who can ask for one

This varies by state, and the statute that authorises the opinion usually names the list. The office pages quoted here were read directly, and the statute text comes from each state's official code.

• Texas lists the requesters in Government Code § 402.042(b): the governor, the head of a state department, a legislative committee, a county auditor, and a few others. A request must be in writing.
• California points to Government Code § 12519: legislators, the Governor and other statewide officers, state agencies, county counsel, district attorneys and sheriffs. The office says it "generally declines" to give opinions to private individuals or officials who are not on the list.
• Florida splits the group in § 16.01(3). The Attorney General shall answer the Governor, Cabinet members, department heads and legislative leaders, and may answer legislators and officers of counties, municipalities and other local governments, on questions about the requesting officer's own duties.
• Washington accepts requests from legislators, statewide elected officials, heads of state agencies and county prosecuting attorneys. It says officers of other local governments, federal officers and private citizens are not entitled to request one.
• Arizona issues opinions when asked by the legislature, any public officer of the state, or a county attorney, and says it does not issue them for private citizens.
• Alabama says the Attorney General must give an opinion to public officials and entities on a question of law "necessary to the present performance of some official act," and cannot issue opinions on questions that are moot, private, personal or in litigation.

Most offices also decline questions that are in litigation or that turn on disputed facts. Washington's page lists these in detail.

What weight does an AG opinion carry

None of the offices above claims that an opinion binds a court. Their own wording:

So an opinion is persuasive authority. A good brief cites one when no statute or case answers the question, and expects a judge to weigh it, not follow it.

Opinions also go stale. Washington warns that older opinions may not reflect current law when "the Legislature amends the statute we referenced, or enacts a new statute, or a new court decision reaches a different conclusion." Texas keeps a separate page listing opinions that were overruled, modified, affirmed or withdrawn. It includes ones overruled by court decisions and ones superseded by statute, for example JM-1006, listed as overruled by statute DM-256.

A short history: one sentence in 1789, then a website per state

The practice is as old as the federal government. The Judiciary Act, approved September 24, 1789, created the office of attorney general for the United States. Besides conducting Supreme Court cases, the office's duty was "to give his advice and opinion upon questions of law when required by the President of the United States, or when requested by the heads of any of the departments, touching any matters that may concern their departments." The text is reproduced from the Statutes at Large on Yale's Avalon Project. Read it again with the state lists above in mind. A named set of officials may ask, and they may ask about their own business. The state rules listed above follow the same pattern.

What the states did with the idea is where the mess comes from, and Texas shows it. The Texas opinions page numbers opinions by the attorney general who issued them. Gerald Mann's opinions from 1939 to 1943 run O-0001 to O-5740, Grover Sellers carries the same O series on to O-7543 through 1946, and Price Daniel starts over at V-0001 in 1947. Later offices got prefixes of their own: S, WW, C, M, H, MW, JM, DM, JC, GA and now KP. In 2023 the page also lists two provisional attorneys general, each with a prefix of their own (AC and JS). The consequence is practical. A bare "0015" tells you nothing, and the prefix is part of the citation.

In their words

Not everything on an attorney general's website is an opinion, and people trip on that. California's attorney general has a consumer FAQ on the state privacy law, and the page says its answers "are not legal advice, regulatory guidance, or an opinion of the Attorney General." In a December 2021 Hacker News thread about privacy law, one commenter brushed the same page aside in two sentences: "That's an FAQ for consumers. It's not legally binding." (dqv, Hacker News, December 2021). Both are right, and it is a handy test. If the document doesn't answer a specific legal question for an official who asked, it isn't an opinion, however official the website looks.

Four mistakes people make with them

Citing an informal letter as an AG opinion. Washington says outright that informal letters should not be described or cited as Attorney General Opinions. A reader who knows the state will catch it. Check which type you have before you quote it.

Treating one as law. A judge can follow an opinion or disagree with it. Texas's own list of overruled and modified opinions includes several overruled by court decisions. Cite an opinion as persuasive, and lead with the statute or case when you have one.

Skipping the date. Opinions interpret the statute as it read at the time. JM-1006 in Texas is listed as overruled by statute, DM-256. If the statute has moved since the opinion, the opinion may no longer describe it.

Stretching it past the question. The office answers the question the official asked, on the facts given. Texas says an opinion cannot resolve factual disputes. Florida opinions show the shape: AGO 2021-01 opens with the question "substantially" as asked, then a one-line "In sum" answer. Read those two parts first and check that your situation matches before you rely on the rest.

Attorney general opinions by state: where each one lives

This table is built from each office's own opinions page, plus the statute that authorises the opinion where the page does not say.

Why they are so scattered

State offices publish independently, and nothing coordinates their opinion pages. Four differences cause most of the trouble in the seven states above.

Numbering. KP-0537 in Texas is an author and a count. In California the number leads with the year. Florida uses AGO and a year. Arizona prefixes an I. A citation parser written for one state fails on the next.

Types. Washington and Florida separate formal opinions from informal letters. Georgia separates official from unofficial. Texas's overruled list also carries older letter opinions with LO numbers. If you cite an informal letter as an AG opinion, a careful reader will notice. Our Washington guide covers how that office wants its two types cited.

Start dates. California's compilation starts in 1980, Washington's formal opinions in 1949, Arizona's list in 2011. Anything earlier needs a second source.

Format. Some offices post a PDF per opinion. Others post a web page. Some run a search app that is separate from the browsable list. Scraping all of that into one table is possible but it is a project. State-level scraping covers what breaks along the way.

Finding opinions across states with the API

When the question is "what have several states said about this," a per-state hunt is slow. The Vaquill AI API puts the opinions behind one search endpoint. Set corpusType to STATE_AG_OPINION, pass one state or a list, and add yearFrom, actStatus or limit as needed. Each result links back to the office's own page in sourceUrl.

import os
import requests

API = "https://api.vaquill.ai/api/v1"
headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['VAQUILL_API_KEY']}"}

resp = requests.post(
    f"{API}/us/statutes/search",
    headers=headers,
    json={
        "query": "county commissioner serving as city council member incompatible offices",
        "corpusType": "STATE_AG_OPINION",
        "state": "tx",
        "limit": 3,
        "fields": ["citation", "issueDate", "sourceUrl"],
    },
    timeout=30,
)
resp.raise_for_status()
for hit in resp.json()["results"]:
    print(hit["citation"], hit["issueDate"], hit["sourceUrl"])

The requests in this section were run against the live API in October 2026. That query returned these three Texas opinions, in this order:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "actId": "AGOP_TX_GA_0015",
      "citation": "Tex. Att'y Gen. Op. GA-0015",
      "issueDate": "2003-01-24",
      "sourceUrl": "https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/opinion-files/opinion/2003/ga0015.pdf"
    },
    {
      "actId": "AGOP_TX_GA_0362",
      "citation": "Tex. Att'y Gen. Op. GA-0362",
      "issueDate": "2005-10-03",
      "sourceUrl": "https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/opinion-files/opinion/2005/ga0362.pdf"
    },
    {
      "actId": "AGOP_TX_GA_0786",
      "citation": "Tex. Att'y Gen. Op. GA-0786",
      "issueDate": "2010-07-23",
      "sourceUrl": "https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/opinion-files/opinion/2010/ga0786.pdf"
    }
  ],
  "count": 3,
  "hasMore": true,
  "noGoodMatch": false,
  "matchQuality": "strong"
}

noGoodMatch is true when nothing in the corpus looks on point, which is your cue to reword the query before trusting the top hit. count is the number of results in this response, and hasMore: true means more are available: repeat the request with offset set to 3 (or your page size) to get the next page. Results come back ranked by relevance, so the top hit is the best match and may be the oldest. To read one in full, take its actId from the search response and fetch the body. Do not build the id by hand.

curl -s "https://api.vaquill.ai/api/v1/us/statutes/section/AGOP_TX_GA_0015/body?format=plain" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VAQUILL_API_KEY"

The parameters used above:

Errors are plain. A missing or wrong key returns 401. A parameter the API does not recognise, such as a field name that does not exist, returns 422 with a message that names the unknown value and lists the valid ones. A query with nothing relevant returns an empty or weak result, so read count and noGoodMatch first. Failed calls are not charged. The full request and response reference is in the API docs.

To search several states at once, pass a list: "state": ["ca", "fl", "wa", "az"]. The same request with "actStatus": ["superseded", "withdrawn"] returns only opinions marked dead. In a check of Texas, JM-1006 came back as superseded with supersededBy: "DM-256", which matches the state's own overruled list. That is a quick way to screen a result set before you read it.

One trap with multi-state search: ranking is global, so a list of states does not give you an even spread. When I sent a request for dual office holding across ["ca", "al", "az", "ga", "fl"] with limit: 10, it returned six California opinions, three Florida opinions and one Georgia unofficial opinion, and nothing from Alabama or Arizona. If you need a fixed number of hits from each state, send one request per state and merge the results yourself.

My rule for anything you plan to rely on is three checks before you cite it: read the opinion at sourceUrl, look it up on the office's list of overruled or withdrawn opinions where one exists, and check whether the statute it interprets has changed since the opinion date.

Before you build on a result set, call the free GET /us/statutes/coverage endpoint. It lists each jurisdiction with the corpora it holds, so you can confirm that the states you need return STATE_AG_OPINION.

Citing an AG opinion

Use the form the issuing office uses. Texas opinions cite by the number the office gave, such as KP-0537. California's official citation is volume and page in the Opinions of the California Attorney General, such as 84 Ops.Cal.Atty.Gen. 113, which its search page accepts. In Washington, a formal opinion is an "AGO" and an informal letter is cited as a letter of the attorney who signed it, with the date and the person it was addressed to.

The API returns a short citation for every result, and the shape follows each state's habit. These came back from real searches:

Whatever the state, include the date. Because opinions go stale, the date tells your reader which version of the statute the office was reading. For a brief, check the form against the court's own rules, since a short API citation is a lookup key and a court may want something longer.

Where to go next

If you are working in one state, our guides to finding and citing law cover the opinions as part of the whole picture: Texas, California, Florida, Washington and Georgia. For the same job across states in code, the Vaquill AI legal API is where the opinions, the statutes they interpret and the regulations around them share one schema.

Sources read for this post

Every page below was fetched and read in October 2026, and the quotes in this post come from those pages.

• Texas: texasattorneygeneral.gov/opinions, texasattorneygeneral.gov/open-government/how-request-attorney-general-opinion, texasattorneygeneral.gov/opinions/opinions-overruled-modified-affirmed-withdrawn, and Government Code § 402.042 at tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/GV/htm/GV.402.htm.
• California: oag.ca.gov/opinions, which quotes Government Code § 12519.
• Florida: myfloridalegal.com/ag-opinions, myfloridalegal.com/histago.nsf/opinions, and Fla. Stat. § 16.01 at leg.state.fl.us.
• Washington: atg.wa.gov/ago-opinions.
• Georgia: law.georgia.gov/opinions, with the Official and Unofficial listings under it, and O.C.G.A. § 45-15-3.
• Alabama: alabamaag.gov/opinions, alabamaag.gov/requesting-an-opinion, alabamaag.gov/opinions-history.
• Arizona: azag.gov/opinions.

This guide is part of US Law Data: The Complete Guide, a map of where US law comes from and how to use it.

FAQ

How do I find an attorney general opinion? Go to the opinions page of the state's attorney general and search by number, citation or phrase. Texas, California, Florida, Washington, Georgia, Alabama and Arizona each run their own page. If you do not know which state issued it, search several states at once through an API that carries the STATE_AG_OPINION corpus.

Are attorney general opinions binding? They do not bind courts. Washington's attorney general says formal opinions are not binding in any way, and California says its opinions get great weight from the courts. Treat them as persuasive authority. An official who asked for the opinion will usually follow it in practice.

What is the difference between a formal and an informal attorney general opinion? A formal opinion states the attorney general's official position. An informal opinion is a letter that gives the office's legal analysis without that sign-off. Washington says informal letters should not be cited as Attorney General Opinions, and Florida and Georgia keep similar separations on their sites.

Who can request an attorney general opinion? Usually legislators, statewide officers, agency heads and some local officers such as county attorneys. Each state's statute sets the list. California, Washington and Arizona all say they do not issue opinions to private individuals.

Can I ask the attorney general for an opinion about my own legal problem? Generally no. The offices above answer public officials about their official duties and decline private or personal questions. For a private legal problem you need a lawyer, who may then cite an existing opinion in support.

How do I know if an attorney general opinion is still good? Check the issuing office. Texas publishes a list of opinions overruled, modified, affirmed or withdrawn, and Washington warns that older opinions may be outdated by later statutes or cases. Then check whether the statute the opinion interprets has changed. In the Vaquill AI API you can also filter by actStatus.

Is there a single database of all state AG opinions? Not from the states. Each office publishes its own. The Vaquill AI API brings the opinions into one corpus you can filter by state, date and status, with a link back to the office's own page for each one.

What does STATE_AG_OPINION return? It returns written opinions of a state attorney general that interpret that state's statutes, constitution and regulations for an official who asked. Where a state runs a second series, such as Georgia's unofficial opinions, it appears in the same corpus under its own actId prefix. Each result has an actId, a citation, an issue date where known, and a sourceUrl that points to the publishing office.

Priyansh Khodiyar

Co-Founder & CTO

Priyansh leads engineering and AI at Vaquill AI: the pipelines that pull statutes, regulations and court rules from every US jurisdiction's official publisher, and the REST API, MCP server and open dataset that serve them.