The prime players in Tuesday’s argument are lawyers for the State of Colorado and the Christian therapist suing over its conversion therapy law. But D. John Sauer, the solicitor general for the Trump administration, also requested that his office be allowed to participate in the arguments in support of the therapist, Kaley Chiles.
Mr. Sauer’s office has been on winning streak in front of the Supreme Court. He first broke onto the national scene with what seemed like an audacious argument: A former president could be immune from criminal prosecution even if he ordered a team of Navy SEALs to kill a political rival.
When asked by a federal appeals court, he accepted that premise that former presidents could not be criminally prosecuted for actions they took in office. He won that case before the Supreme Court in July 2024, with a majority of the justices granting Donald J. Trump substantial immunity from prosecution before he was re-elected president.
Now, Mr. Sauer, a former Rhodes Scholar and Supreme Court clerk from Missouri, is the solicitor general of the United States, the voice of the Trump administration before the justices.
In his role, Mr. Sauer leads a group of lawyers within the Justice Department who decide which cases to bring before the justices on behalf of the Trump administration, shape the administration’s legal arguments and argue the cases before the court.
Tuesday’s case is being argued by Hashim M. Mooppan, a principal deputy solicitor general. Like Mr. Sauer, he was a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia. Mr. Mooppan was a counselor to the solicitor general during the first Trump administration.
Mr. Sauer’s path to the second Trump administration ran through Missouri, where he served as solicitor general from 2017 to 2023 before working at a private firm. He gained a reputation as a particularly assertive litigator for conservative causes, including the opposition of same-sex marriage, access to contraception and the participation of transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports.
Since his confirmation, Mr. Sauer has been at the center of a whirlwind of litigation before the justices, defending Trump administration policies on several central pieces of the president’s agenda, including imposing tariffs, ending birthright citizenship and dismantling federal agencies. The pace has been frantic — Mr. Sauer has made more than two dozen requests for emergency relief — and it appears unlikely to slow anytime soon.
So far, his office has an extraordinary track record of victories, including a 6-to-3 ruling in late June that sharply curtailed the power of federal trial court judges to issue nationwide freezes on administration policies — the main tool that opponents had used to block the president’s agenda.
Since Mr. Trump returned to office in January and began issuing a blitz of presidential orders, Mr. Sauer has largely been arguing for emergency intervention by the Supreme Court, asking that the justices overturn temporary procedural rulings from lower court judges as opposed to weighing in on the substance of the policies.
This term, the solicitor general will marshal arguments directly on the merits of some of the president’s central policies, including whether a president can impose sweeping global tariffs — a case that has been fast-tracked by the court and is scheduled to be heard in November. The court has said that it will also consider whether Mr. Trump can fire heads of independent agencies.
In late September, Mr. Sauer also asked the justices to decide whether Mr. Trump has the authority to end birthright citizenship, the foundational principle stipulating that children born on U.S. soil are Americans.
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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