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Joanna Rosen Forster

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Joanna Forster’s multifaceted background positions her to effectively manage conflicts across the legal spectrum and across the globe. In her prior roles as general counsel (representing both plaintiffs and defendants) and as government prosecutor/enforcer, Joanna handled nearly every type of matter, ranging from complex commercial and white collar matters in areas such as employment, intellectual property, securities and antitrust law, to internal investigations and corporate and M&A transactions. She views her role as both a conflict manager, dispensing advice to avoid adversarial action, and as a tech and business litigator, resolving disputes with her client’s business goals in mind.

Having served as the general counsel and compliance officer of a publicly traded ecommerce platform operating in over 60 countries, Joanna has an appreciation of strategic dispute resolution, investigations, and compliance from a general counsel’s perspective. By understanding how business leaders combine the input of in-house and outside counsel to make decisions, Joanna is able to provide her clients with decisive and efficient legal guidance.

Her practice includes litigating domestic and cross-border complex commercial disputes and advising technology and ecommerce companies on matters related to internet platforms, product launches, market campaigns, and new vertical lines of business, all while advising on foreign and domestic laws that regulate online content, physical products, and the companies that bring them to market. Drawing on her experience as the General Counsel of an online e-commerce marketplace, Joanna also regularly advises and counsels clients on California’s Proposition 65, from prevention and compliance to remediation. Joanna is well-versed in key regulations that impact ecommerce companies, including the EU’s Digital Services Act, the U.S. INFORM Act, and the proposed SHOP SAFE Act, as well as laws and regulations that govern online speech such as the Communications Decency Act, Section 230.

Prior to going in-house, Joanna was the deputy attorney general, Corporate Fraud Section of the California Department of Justice. In this capacity, she led large, complex civil matters alleging violations of California’s False Claims Act, Securities Law, Section 17200, Cartwright Act, and other deceptive business practices. She also maintained her own investigations and litigation docket.

Before joining the California Department of Justice, Joanna spent nearly a decade in private practice, where she focused on civil and criminal antitrust and commercial litigation. She also served as a law clerk for the Honorable Consuelo B. Marshall in the U.S. District Court for the Central District Court of California.

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Each week, Crowell & Moring’s State Attorneys General team highlights significant actions that State AGs have taken. See our State Attorneys General page for more insights. Below are the updates from December 11-17:

Multistate

  • A coalition of 22 state attorneys general sued Uber, joining the FTC, over alleged by making it extremely difficult for consumers to cancel their Uber One subscriptions and charging them unauthorized fees. The lawsuit seeks restitution for affected consumers, civil penalties, and injunctive relief to prevent deceptive enrollment tactics and unfair cancellation obstacles that resulted in unauthorized fees.
  • A coalition of 16 state attorneys general sued the U.S. Department of Transportation for unlawfully suspending two federal grant programs—Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) and Electric Vehicle Charger Reliability and Accessibility Accelerator—authorized under the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act. The lawsuit alleges that halting these programs violates the Constitution, the IIJA, and the Administrative Procedure Act, and seeks injunctive relief directing USDOT to resume funding EV charging infrastructure projects, which would expand access, reduce pollution, and promote clean energy jobs. 

Continue Reading State AG News: Unfair Fees, Medicaid Fraud, Data Privacy (December 11-17, 2025)

Platkin A

On November 12, 2025, Crowell & Moring hosted a fireside chat with New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin moderated by Counsel Derick D. Dailey. The interactive discussion focused on the evolving role of State AGs and covered a number of topics including consumer protection, antitrust, civil rights, emerging technology, data privacy and healthcare.

In the first few years following the public launch of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the autumn of 2022, litigation related to AI focused primarily on claims of copyright infringement. Suits revolved around allegations that the data on which AI models train, and/or the output they produce, infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others.

Each week, Crowell & Moring’s State Attorneys General team highlights significant actions that State AGs have taken. See our State Attorneys General page for more insights. Below are the updates from October 2-8, 2025:

Multistate

  • A multistate coalition of 21 attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent the imposition of a new immigration-related condition limiting the plaintiff states’ access to federal grant programs for victim services and criminal justice. The same coalition of attorneys general previously filed another lawsuit in August seeking relief from similar conditions on Victims of Crime Act grant programs, and recently announced that the DOJ has dropped these conditions seemingly as a result of that legal pressure.   
  • A multistate coalition of 23 attorneys general filed an amicus brief in Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, et al., v. Michael Howe, Secretary of State of North Dakota, a lawsuit challenging the alleged dilution of Native Americans’ votes under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The brief argues that private enforcement of the VRA is necessary to preserve fundamental rights, and that the Eighth Circuit misapplied the law by departing from established Supreme Court precedent.
  • A multistate coalition of 5 attorneys general, in collaboration with the Federal Trade Commission, filed a lawsuit against Zillow and Redfin for allegedly entering an anticompetitive agreement to increase rental prices. The complaint alleges that Zillow paid Redfin $100 million to stop selling multifamily advertising, terminate its existing multifamily advertising contracts, and transition their multifamily advertising customers to Zillow. The attorneys general argue that this violates Section 1 of the Sherman Act and Section 7 of the Clayton Act, and seek declaratory and injunctive relief to undo and prevent anticompetitive harms stemming from this conduct.
  • Eight attorneys general authored an op-ed urging colleges and universities to pursue diverse student bodies by using race-neutral tools, and critiquing recent guidance from the U.S. Attorney General as well as the College Board’s cancellation of Landscape, a program that provided admissions officers with data on the high schools and neighborhoods of applicants.  The op-ed argues that schools must look beyond test scores and GPAs “to identify high-achieving students from disadvantaged communities.”

Continue Reading State AG News: Energy, Consumer Protection, Social Media

Over the past several months, Missouri and Florida have gone on the offensive against the nation’s largest proxy advisors related to what they deemed “radical” agendas in providing proxy advice. In Texas, two of the largest proxy advisors, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS) and Glass, Lewis & Co., LLC (“Glass Lewis”), punched first, filing separate…

State AG Fireside Chat 7.25

On July 29, 2025, Crowell & Moring and the Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA) hosted a fireside chat with Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and New York Chief Deputy Attorney General Chris D’Angelo moderated by Crowell Privacy & Cybersecurity Partner Linda Malek. The discussion centered on emerging compliance and enforcement priorities in state data privacy…

Each week, Crowell & Moring’s State Attorneys General team highlights significant actions that State AGs have taken. See our State Attorneys General page for more insights. Below are the updates from July 10-16, 2025:

Multistate

  • A multistate coalition of 15 attorneys general announced that it is withdrawing its motion for a preliminary injunction in New Jersey v. Bondi, a lawsuit to prevent the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (“ATF”) from distributing previously seized Forced Reset Triggers (“FRTs”) back into the community. FRTs are used to turn semi-automatic firearms into fully automatic machineguns and were previously illegal under federal law. Thus, ATF previously seized approximately 12,000 FRTs after extensive retrieval operations. However, ATF reversed course. According to the coalition’s complaint, ATF has dropped pending enforcement actions against individuals who allegedly possessed FRTs and agreed to return seized FRTs back to its previous owners. The coalition stated that it was withdrawing its motion for a preliminary injunction after the Government agreed not to return FRTs to the coalition states. 

Continue Reading State AG News: Federal Funding and Deceptive Practices July 10-16, 2025

Each week, Crowell & Moring’s State Attorneys General team highlights significant actions that State AGs have taken. See our State Attorneys General page for more insights. Below are the updates from May 29-June 11, 2025

Multistate

  • A bipartisan coalition of 42 attorneys general sent a letter to the House Committee on Financial Services and the Senate Banking Committee regarding the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act of 2025 (H.R. 2808 and S. 1467). The letter urges Congress to pass this legislation to end the abusive use of mortgage credit triggers and seeks to preserve the use of mortgage credit to narrowly defined, consumer consented circumstances.
  • A coalition of 8 attorneys general announced a contempt order was filed against John Spiller, owner of Rising Eagle Capital Group, JSquared Telecom, and Rising Eagle Capital Group-Cayman, which offered robocall dialer and VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol ) services to telemarketers. Spiller allegedly helped facilitate large volumes of robocalls, including many targeting numbers on the Do Not Call Registry, through his telemarketing service companies. Spiller is required to pay $600,000 in attorney’s fees and litigation costs for violating a 2023 court order that barred him from placing or facilitating robocalls.

Continue Reading State AG News: Robocalls, False Advertising, Inflated Rent May 29-June 11, 2025

Companies frequently face a multitude of enforcement priorities from federal and state enforcers. Join us as we discuss ways to balance competing enforcement priorities from the federal government along with potentially, 50 different states’ laws and enforcement regimes. Learn the answer to the question “What are some of the priorities companies can expect to see…

On July 1, the U.S. Supreme Court remanded a set of Florida and Texas laws restricting social medial companies’ ability to curate, amend or edit online user content in Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, but in so doing noted that “to the extent that social media platforms create expressive products, they receive the First Amendment’s protection.”[1]Continue Reading The State Law Landscape After Justices’ Social Media Ruling