DOJ announces creation of Enforcement & Affirmative Litigation Branch

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced the creation of the Enforcement & Affirmative Litigation Branch within the Department’s Civil Division.

According to a DOJ press release issued September 25, 2025, the Branch is “dedicated to safeguarding public health and safety through proactive enforcement and high-impact affirmative litigation.”

Below, we highlight key details of DOJ’s announcement and discuss their implications.

Establishing the Enforcement & Affirmative Litigation Branch

The new branch of DOJ’s Civil Division will consist of two sections: the Enforcement Section and Affirmative Litigation Section.

• The Enforcement Section will focus on consumer protection statutes, such as the:


• Controlled Substances Act (CSA)
• Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA)
• Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA)
• Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act)
• Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)
• Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA)


• The Affirmative Litigation Section will focus on filing lawsuits against states, municipalities, and private entities that “interfere with or obstruct federal policies, ensuring nationwide compliance with the U.S. Constitution and federal law.”[1]

DOJ’s press release explains that it aims to “strengthen the Civil Division’s ability to advance the Department’s priorities, including protecting women and children from pharmaceutical companies, health care providers, and medical associations profiting off of false and misleading claims related to so-called gender transition, and ending sanctuary jurisdiction laws, policies, and practices that impede federal immigration enforcement and make Americans less safe in their communities.”[2]

The Branch is expected to be staffed by attorneys from the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch (which was eliminated on September 30, 2025), as well as certain attorneys from the Civil Division’s Federal Programs Branch, which focuses on both affirmative and defensive litigation involving federal statutes, Executive Orders (EOs), regulations, and other programmatic challenges.

Anticipating the work of the new branch

The creation of the Enforcement & Affirmative Litigation Branch comes on the heels of several DOJ memoranda announcing new initiatives and identifying current priorities. For example, on April 22, 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memorandum titled “Preventing the Mutilation of American Children” to certain Component Heads of the DOJ. That memorandum sought to provide guidance on the implementation of President Donald Trump’s EO, “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” (EO 14187), which reversed several Biden Administration policies supporting gender transition treatments and procedures. Details of that memorandum can be found in a prior alert.

On June 11, 2025, DOJ’s Civil Division released a memorandum identifying its enforcement priorities. The memorandum describes the Civil Division’s policy objectives and directs Division attorneys to prioritize investigations and enforcement actions in, among other areas, the following:

• Combatting discriminatory practices and policies, including the “use of all available resources to pursue affirmative litigation combatting unlawful discriminatory practices in the private sector;”


• Ending antisemitism by prioritizing “investigations and enforcement actions against entities that make claims for federal funds but knowingly violate federal civil rights laws by participating in or allowing antisemitism;” and


• Protecting women and children by prioritizing “investigations of doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and other appropriate entities” for possible violations of the FDCA and other laws, including investigation of “(1) pharmaceutical companies that manufacture drugs used in connection with so-called gender transition and (2) dealers such as online pharmacies suspected of illegally selling such drugs.”

It is expected that the newly established Branch will take the lead in these priority areas. And, as the Civil Division seeks to centralize much of its affirmative litigation into one branch, an increase in investigations and enforcement actions related to the Trump Administration’s stated priorities may be expected across industries.

Contact

DLA Piper has broad industry, regulatory, and government-facing litigation experience to address client concerns and anticipate future developments in this area. For more information, please contact the authors.

 

[1] DOJ press release (Sept. 25, 2025).

[2] Id.