When Chuck Hatfield, a legal professional in Missouri, confirmed up at a 2019 listening to to constitute Deliberate Parenthood in its battle to stay a license for the state’s lone surgical abortion health center, he was once stunned to peer a well-recognized face opposing him within the state’s solicitor normal, D. John Sauer.
It was once an administrative hearing, now not a high-stakes trial, however Mr. Sauer, Missouri’s best appellate legal professional, had now not despatched a deputy. As a substitute, he got here to argue himself that Deliberate Parenthood’s license will have to now not be renewed on account of a handful of circumstances of headaches on account of abortions. Mr. Sauer misplaced the listening to, however he had come ready for a battle.
“He litigated the case aggressively,” Mr. Hatfield mentioned.
Mr. Sauer, 50, now President Trump’s variety to be the U.S. solicitor normal — the highest Justice Division authentic representing the government in arguments earlier than the Superb Courtroom — first won nationwide consideration ultimate yr when he represented Mr. Trump in his presidential immunity case. He offered a bold argument: A former president may well be immune from prosecution despite the fact that he ordered SEAL Crew 6 to assassinate a political rival.
That instance elicited outcries on the time, however Mr. Hatfield mentioned he discovered it conventional of Mr. Sauer, a specifically assertive litigator for conservative reasons for years, maximum particularly abortion.
“Different legal professionals would most likely now not take the stretch positions, however John will cross forward and take them,” Mr. Hatfield mentioned.
On Thursday, the Senate showed Mr. Sauer, 52 to 45, striking him in command of Mr. Trump’s competitive try to get the Superb Courtroom to interfere in a chain of circumstances through which decrease court docket judges have briefly blocked large items of the management’s time table.
Mr. Sauer’s affirmation places him able once in a while known as the “tenth justice.” It additionally makes him one in every of a series of Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers selected to occupy senior positions within the Justice Division.
Mr. Sauer’s occupation litigating towards same-sex marriage, get admission to to birth control and transgender women in ladies’s sports activities may just seem to be a very simple have compatibility with the Trump management. However his previous dedication to anti-abortion litigation would possibly end up a high-wire act with a president who has confronted a tricky political calculus on abortion, which polling presentations a majority of the rustic believes will have to be prison.
In spite of appointing 3 justices who helped overturn constitutional protections for abortion and claiming credit score for his or her determination, Mr. Trump attempted to melt his abortion place all through the 2024 marketing campaign, promising to veto a national ban. In December, he mentioned he would not ask the F.D.A. to dam get admission to to abortion capsules.
Abortion restrictions are most likely to go back to the court docket as anti-abortion teams proceed to push to restrict get admission to to the process. The justices heard two demanding situations to abortion ultimate time period — an attempt to limit access to a broadly to be had abortion tablet and a challenge to Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion — and it kind of feels most likely that fighters of abortion will proceed to deliver take a look at circumstances earlier than the court docket’s 6-to-3 conservative supermajority.
“Sauer would possibly need to make a decision how a lot of a workforce participant he desires to be if the management isn’t as strident as he’s expressed, even though that stridency may well be what it desires,” mentioned Lincoln Caplan, a senior analysis pupil at Yale Regulation Faculty and the creator of a e book at the historical past of solicitor generals.
Even though the position was once at the start regarded as unbiased from politics, in contemporary many years, the solicitor normal has change into extra carefully aligned with the president, Mr. Caplan mentioned. He mentioned he noticed Mr. Sauer’s nomination as “a large subsequent step at the spectrum of politically appropriate solicitors normal.”
Mr. Sauer didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Abortion rights organizations mentioned they have been viewing Mr. Sauer’s nomination with worry, anxious that regardless of Mr. Trump’s combined messages on abortion, the Justice Division is now led via fighters of abortion rights. That comes with Legal professional Basic Pam Bondi, who as Florida’s legal professional normal supported abortion restrictions and challenged the Reasonably priced Care Act’s provision requiring maximum well being plans to hide start regulate.
“In combination, they’re able to truly motive grave and longstanding injury to reproductive rights,” mentioned Freya Riedlin, the senior federal coverage suggest for the Heart for Reproductive Rights.
In contrast to different legal professionals who’ve held the process lately, Mr. Sauer spent a lot of his occupation in his house state of Missouri, quite than at a best Washington company or in academia.
He grew up in St. Louis in a politically hooked up, rich Catholic circle of relatives. His father, Fred, a businessman who unsuccessfully ran for governor, founded Missouri Roundtable for Life, a company considering opposing abortion and embryonic stem cellular analysis. Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative anti-abortion activist, was once a circle of relatives good friend who praised the more youthful Mr. Sauer as “a brilliant young lawyer” for his prison writings opposing same-sex marriage.
At Saint Louis Priory Faculty, an all-boys non-public faculty run via Benedictine clergymen. Mr. Sauer had a name as a hard-charging scholar devoted to conservative values.
“He would now not be outworked,” mentioned Tim O’Connell, a former classmate who’s now a legal professional in Missouri.
Mr. Sauer went directly to earn elite credentials, learning at Oxford as a Rhodes pupil and at Harvard Regulation, the place he served as an editor at the regulation evaluate.
Pass judgement on J. Michael Luttig selected Mr. Sauer as one in every of his regulation clerks, a prestigious place made extra fascinating as a result of a lot of his clerks went directly to paintings on the Superb Courtroom.
Even though Pass judgement on Luttig has change into an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump, specifically of his position within the Jan. 6, 2021, assault at the Capitol, he spoke extremely of his former clerk.
“He’s intellectually fair,” Pass judgement on Luttig mentioned of Mr. Sauer. “He’s honest, and he’s a person of significant integrity. Those are an important qualities for a solicitor normal.”
Mr. Sauer then clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia earlier than becoming a member of Cooper & Kirk, an influential conservative Washington regulation company, for lower than two years earlier than returning to Missouri in 2008 as an assistant federal prosecutor. In 2015, he based his personal company, the James Otis Regulation Staff, named for an early American legal professional who espoused restricted govt and adversarial British measures that allowed cops to look non-public assets.
That yr he represented a gaggle of activists from the anti-abortion Heart for Clinical Development who were sued when they secretly recorded meetings of the Nationwide Abortion Federation and Deliberate Parenthood and launched movies that purported to turn officers trafficking in fetal portions. The Nationwide Abortion Federation accused the group of sporting out a conspiracy geared toward harassing abortion suppliers.
He additionally represented Catholic theologians in a case earlier than the Superb Courtroom, arguing that the craft store Hobby Lobby will have to now not be required to pay for insurance coverage to hide birth control.
In 2017, Josh Hawley, who were newly elected as Missouri’s legal professional normal, invited him to lunch at a Cracker Barrel. Over hen fried steak, Mr. Hawley made his pitch.
“I mentioned, ‘John, you’ve the facility and file to be solicitor normal of the USA, however would you imagine turning into solicitor normal of the state of Missouri?’” Mr. Hawley recalled at Mr. Sauer’s affirmation listening to in February.
Underneath Mr. Hawley, the workplace driven for limits on abortion get admission to, together with the 2019 case towards Deliberate Parenthood. That effort won nationwide consideration after the director of the Missouri well being division testified that he had created a spreadsheet to trace the menstrual cycles of Deliberate Parenthood sufferers to check out to spot “failed abortions.”
In an emailed commentary, Mr. Hawley mentioned Mr. Sauer was once his “good friend” and would make a “very good” solicitor normal.
Mr. Sauer additionally defended a state regulation geared toward blocking off Medicaid price range from going to Deliberate Parenthood, a part of a bigger Republican effort to defund the group.
All over that point, in line with information Mr. Sauer supplied within the affirmation procedure, he participated in different trainings for the Alliance Protecting Freedom, a conservative prison group. The gang has led most of the prison demanding situations to abortion, together with a case ultimate yr difficult the Meals and Drug Management’s approval of abortion drugs.
The Superb Courtroom rejected that case, discovering that the docs and anti-abortion scientific teams who introduced the lawsuit had failed to turn they have been immediately injured. However the justices did not settle the question of whether or not the tablet will have to stay to be had.
In 2019, Mr. Sauer traveled to Cancún, Mexico, to an match hosted via the gang for senior personnel from state lawyers normal workplace. He appeared on a panel referred to as “Studying In Between the Tea Leaves: The Highway Forward for Professional-Lifestyles Litigation.”
Within the weeks after the Superb Courtroom overturned the constitutional right to abortion within the 2022 case of Dobbs v. Jackson Girls’s Well being Group, Mr. Sauer once more spoke at a summit arranged via the gang, this time on state-level efforts to additional prohibit abortion.
In January 2023, he returned to non-public follow, representing Mr. Trump in each his immunity case and within the New York civil case through which Mr. Trump was once accused of sexually abusing the creator E. Jean Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room within the Nineteen Nineties.
At Mr. Sauer’s affirmation listening to, Democrats considering his paintings for Mr. Trump, wondering whether or not he would put loyalty to the president forward of the Charter. In December, Mr. Sauer filed an unusual brief as the private legal professional for Mr. Trump in a Superb Courtroom case over whether or not protective nationwide safety required TikTok to be offered or closed.
The transient, filed after Mr. Trump had introduced Mr. Sauer as his selection for solicitor normal, argued that the justices will have to briefly block a regulation that required ByteDance, TikTok’s mum or dad corporate, to promote the app’s operations in the USA or close it down in order that Mr. Trump may just deal with the topic as soon as he took workplace.
“President Trump on my own possesses the consummate deal-making experience” to get to the bottom of the topic, Mr. Sauer wrote.
The justices rejected the ones arguments, unanimously upholding the law.
However whilst he driven ahead as Mr. Trump’s private legal professional, Mr. Sauer endured to battle towards abortion. Data from Missouri’s ethics fee display he contributed $777,000 to teams opposing a poll measure geared toward making sure abortion get admission to within the state. He was once a number of the biggest donors to these teams.
Julie Tate contributed analysis.
