The main players of Tuesday’s argument are lawyers for the state of Colorado and the Christian therapist by continuing his law on conversion therapy. But D. John Sauer, the general request for the Trump administration, also asked that his office being authorized to participate in the arguments in support of the therapist, Kaley Chiles.
Mr. Sauer’s office won the victories sequence before the Supreme Court. He first collapsed on the national scene with what seemed to be a daring argument: a former president could be sheltered from criminal proceedings even if he ordered a team of Navy Seals to kill a political rival.
When asked by a federal court of appeal, he accepted that the former presidents could not be prosecuted criminally for the actions they took in office. He won this case before the Supreme Court in July 2024, with a majority of judges granting Donald J. Trump substantial immunity from prosecution before being re -elected president.
Now, Mr. Sauer, former Rhodes scholarship holder and clerk of the Supreme Court of Missouri, is the general solicitor of the United States, the voice of the Trump administration before the judges.
In his role, Mr. Sauer leads a group of lawyers in the Ministry of Justice who decide what cases bring before the judges on behalf of the Trump administration, shape the legal arguments of the administration and argue the cases before the court.
The case of Tuesday is affirmed by Hashim Mr. Mooppan, principal assistant general request. Like Mr. Sauer, he was the clerk of judge Antonin Scalia. Mr. Mooppan was advisor to the general request during the first Trump administration.
The way from Mr. Sauer to the second Trump administration crossed Missouri, where he was a general lawyer from 2017 to 2023 before working in a private company. He has acquired a reputation as a particularly assertive litigant for conservative causes, in particular the opposition of homosexual marriage, access to contraception and the participation of transgender athletes in sports for girls and women.
Since his confirmation, Mr. Sauer has been at the center of a whirlwind of disputes before the judges, defending the Trump administration policies on several central elements of the order of the president, in particular to impose prices, putting an end to the citizenship of the right of birth and dismantles the federal agencies. The pace was frantic – Mr. Sauer made more than two dozen emergency rescue requests – and it seems that it is not likely to slow down anytime soon.
Until now, his office has an extraordinary history of victories, including a decision of 6 to 3 at the end of June which has greatly reduced the power of federal judges of the courts of first instance to deposit gels on a national level on administration policies – the main tool that adversaries had used to block the order of the president.
Since Trump returned to functions in January and began to issue a presidential prescription, Mr. Sauer largely pleaded for an emergency intervention by the Supreme Court, asking that judges reversed the temporary procedural decisions of the judges of the lower courts rather than weighing on the substance of policies.
This term, the Solicitor General will carry out the arguments directly on the substance of some of the president’s central policies, especially if a president can impose radical global prices – a case that has been accelerated by the court and should be heard in November. The court said that he would also examine whether Trump can dismiss independent agencies.
At the end of September, Mr. Sauer also asked the judges to decide whether Mr. Trump has the power to end the citizenship of the birth law, the fundamental principle stipulating that children born on American soil are Americans.
