Jonathan F. Mitchell

Mitchell was born and raised in Pennsylvania and is the oldest of seven brothers.{{Cite news|last=Schmidt|first=Michael S.|date=2021-09-12|title=Behind the Texas Abortion Law, a Persevering Conservative Lawyer|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/us/politics/texas-abortion-lawyer-jonathan-mitchell.html|access-date=2021-09-12|issn=0362-4331}} He graduated from Wheaton College in 1998 with a B.A., summa cum laude.{{Cite news |last=Schmidt |first=Michael S. |date=2021-09-12 |title=Behind the Texas Abortion Law, a Persevering Conservative Lawyer |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/us/politics/texas-abortion-lawyer-jonathan-mitchell.html |access-date=2021-09-12 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}} He then graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was an articles editor for the University of Chicago Law Review,{{Cite web|url= https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/v68.pdf |title=The University of Chicago Law Review Volume 68 Masthead|access-date=March 28, 2022}} in 2001 with a Juris Doctor with high honors and Order of the Coif membership.{{cite web |title=Jonathan F. Mitchell, '01: To be Nominated as Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States {{!}} University of Chicago Law School |url=https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/jonathan-f-mitchell-01-named-chairman-administrative-conference-united-states |website=www.law.uchicago.edu|date=6 September 2017 }}

After graduating from law school, Mitchell worked as a law clerk for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 2001 to 2002 and for Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia from 2002 to 2003. After clerking, Mitchell became an attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice, where he worked from 2003 through 2006.{{cite news|date=September 2, 2017|title=President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Personnel to Key Administration Posts|work=whitehouse.gov|url=https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2017/09/02/president-donald-j-trump-announces-intent-nominate-personnel-key|access-date=13 October 2017|via=National Archives}}{{PD-notice}}

After leaving the Department of Justice, Mitchell served as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School from 2006 to 2008. He then worked as a professor at the George Mason University School of Law (now Antonin Scalia Law School) until his appointment as Solicitor General of Texas in 2010. After leaving the Texas Solicitor General's office in 2015, Mitchell served as the Searle Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, before joining the Hoover Institution as a visiting fellow in 2015. Mitchell also served as a visiting professor of law at Stanford Law School before opening his own law firm in 2018.{{cite news|last1=Whisenant|first1=Anna Lee|last2=Ramirez|first2=Stefanie|last3=Madigan|first3=Sarah|date=September 8, 2017|title=The Regulatory Week in Review: September 8, 2017|publisher=The Regulatory Review|url=https://www.theregreview.org/2017/09/08/the-regulatory-week-in-review-september-8-2017/|access-date=17 October 2017}}

Mitchell has published scholarly articles on textualism, national security law, criminal law and procedure, judicial review, American federalism, and the legality of stare decisis in Constitutional adjudication.{{cite web | title=Jonathan Mitchell | url=https://fedsoc.org/contributors/jonathan-mitchell | access-date=July 21, 2022}}

In 2017, President Donald J. Trump nominated Mitchell to chair the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS). Mitchell’s nomination was voted out of committee, but never received a vote on the Senate floor.{{cite web | title=PN931 — Jonathan F. Mitchell — Administrative Conference of the United States | date=4 January 2019 | url=https://www.congress.gov/nomination/115th-congress/931 | access-date=June 19, 2022}}

Mitchell has argued eight times before the Supreme Court of the United States and authored the principal merits brief in 11 Supreme Court cases.

Mitchell has also written and submitted more than 20 amicus curiae briefs in the Supreme Court. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), Mitchell and Adam K. Mortara urged the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade, and their brief argued that overturning Roe should undermine and eventually lead to the reversal of other "lawless" court decisions such as Obergefell v. Hodges, which created a right to same-sex marriage. At the same time, Mitchell and Mortara distinguished and defended the right to interracial marriage recognized in Loving v. Virginia, and argued that the federal right to interracial marriage should be grounded in congressional statutes such as the Civil Rights Act of 1866 rather than court-created substantive-due-process doctrines.{{cite web | title=Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, No. 19-1392, Brief of Texas Right to Life as Amicus Curiae in Support of the Petitioners | url=https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/185344/20210729162610813_Dobbs%20Amicus%20FINAL%20PDFA.pdf| date=July 29, 2021 | access-date=October 30, 2021}}Gersen, Jeannie Suk, [https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/the-conservative-who-wants-to-bring-down-the-supreme-court The Conservative Who Wants to Bring Down the Supreme Court], The New Yorker, January 5, 2023

Mitchell also submitted an amicus brief in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023), which urged the Supreme Court to declare race-based affirmative action unlawful solely under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, without reaching the "much closer question" concerning the constitutionality of affirmative action under the Equal Protection Clause.{{Cite news|last=Liptak|first=Adam|date=May 23, 2022|title=A Conservative Lawyer's New Target After Abortion: Affirmative Action|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/23/us/politics/supreme-court-affirmative-action.html|access-date=June 19, 2022}}{{cite web | title= Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, No. 20-1199, Brief of America First Legal as Amicus Curiae in Support of Neither Party | url= https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1199/222871/20220510094724165_SFFA%20v.%20Harvard%20AFL%20Amicus.pdf | date=May 9, 2022 | access-date=June 19, 2022}}

On February 8, 2024, Mitchell represented former president Donald J. Trump before the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson,{{cite web|title=Trump v. Anderson|url=https://www.oyez.org/cases/2023/23-719|website=Oyez Project|access-date=March 25, 2024}} and urged the Court to reverse the Colorado Supreme Court's decision that declared Trump ineligible for the presidency under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.{{cite web|last1=Gerstein|first1=Josh|date=February 9, 2024|title=A very un-Trumpy performance delivers for Trump at Supreme Court|url=https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/08/trump-lawyer-arguments-supreme-court-00140604|access-date=February 9, 2024|work=Politico}} In an unsigned per curiam opinion issued March 4, 2024, the Court unanimously ruled in favor of former President Trump, holding that Congress has the exclusive ability to enforce Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.{{cite news|last=Mangan|first=Dan|date=March 4, 2024|title=Supreme Court puts Trump back on Colorado Republican primary ballot|publisher=CNBC|url=https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/04/supreme-court-rules-in-trump-colorado-ballot-case.html|access-date=March 4, 2024}}{{cite news|last=Sherman|first=Mark|date=March 4, 2024|title=Supreme Court restores Trump to ballot, rejecting state attempts to ban him over Capitol attack|publisher=Associated Press|url=https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-trump-insurrection-election-colorado-51e79c0f03013034c8a042cb278b6446|access-date=March 4, 2024}}

On July 2, 2024, Mitchell sued Northwestern University over its alleged use of race and sex preferences in faculty hiring.{{cite web|date=July 2, 2024|title=Complaint in FASORP v. Northwestern University, No. 1:24-cv-05558 (N.D. Ill.)|url= https://fasorp.org/static/fasorp/pdf/NW-Complaint-202407-02.pdf|access-date=July 7, 2024}} In this lawsuit, Mitchell is representing an organization called Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences (or FASORP),{{cite web|url=https://fasorp.org|access-date=July 7, 2024|title=Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences (FASORP)}} which litigates against race and sex preferences and opposes practices that subordinate academic merit to diversity considerations. The complaint accuses Northwestern University of violating numerous federal anti-discrimination statutes, including [https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/TitleVI Title VI],[https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/TitleVI Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964] [https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-ix-education-amendments-1972 Title IX],[https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-ix-education-amendments-1972 Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972] and [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1981 42 U.S.C. § 1981].[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1981 42 U.S.C. § 1981]

In 2021, the Texas legislature enacted the Texas Heartbeat Act or Senate Bill 8 (SB 8), which bans abortion at approximately six weeks of pregnancy and includes an unusual enforcement mechanism designed to insulate the law from judicial review. Rather than allowing state officials to enforce the ban, the statute authorizes private citizens to sue anyone who performs or assists a post-heartbeat abortion, while forbidding the state and its officers to enforce the law in any way.{{Cite news|last=Tavernise|first=Sabrina|date=2021-07-09|title=Citizens, Not the State, Will Enforce New Abortion Law in Texas|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/us/abortion-law-regulations-texas.html|access-date=2021-11-09}} By designing the statute in this manner, the legislature sought to make it impossible for abortion providers to challenge SB 8 in pre-enforcement lawsuits.{{cite news | last1= Marcus | first1=Ruth |title=Opinion: The Supreme Court aids and abets Texas in violating women's constitutional rights | url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/02/texas-antiabortion-law-unconstitutional| date=September 2, 2021 | newspaper=The Washington Post | access-date=June 18, 2022}}

On September 1, 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States refused to enjoin the enforcement of SB 8 on account of the “complex and novel antecedent procedural questions” presented by this enforcement mechanism. The courts eventually ruled that abortion providers could not challenge the constitutionality of SB 8 in pre-enforcement lawsuits; they must instead wait to be sued in state court by a private individual and assert their constitutional claims as a defense in those state-court proceedings.{{cite web | last1=Zernike | first1=Kate | last2=Liptak | first2=Adam |title=Texas Supreme Court Shuts Down Final Challenge to Abortion Law | url= https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/us/texas-abortion-law.html| date=March 11, 2022 | work=The New York Times | access-date=April 7, 2021}}{{cite web |date=December 10, 2021 |title=Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson, No. 21-463 |url=https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-463_3ebh.pdf |access-date=December 26, 2021 |website=supremecourt.gov}} News outlets reported that Mitchell designed the enforcement mechanism that allowed SB 8 to evade judicial review and outlaw abortion in Texas despite the statute’s incompatibility with Roe v. Wade.

SB 8's efforts to stymie judicial review have been a matter of intense controversy.{{cite web | last1= Milhiser | first1=Ian |title=The staggering implications of the Supreme Court's Texas anti-abortion ruling | url=https://www.vox.com/22653779/supreme-court-abortion-texas-sb8-whole-womans-health-jackson-roe-wade| date=September 2, 2021 | work=Vox | access-date=June 18, 2022}} Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor denounced the statute as “a breathtaking act of defiance” that hinders the judiciary from counteracting a “flagrantly unconstitutional law”, while anti-abortion commentators have praised the statute for its novel design and its successful circumvention of Roe v. Wade.{{cite web|last1=Severino|first1=Roger|date=September 2, 2021|title=Texas's Absolutely Genius Victory for Life|url=https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/texass-absolutely-genius-victory-for-life/|access-date=November 9, 2021|work=National Review}} The success of SB 8 was a major blow to Roe v. Wade, as it enabled other states to ban abortion and evade judicial review by copying the statute's novel enforcement mechanism.{{cite web | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/us/oklahoma-abortion-ban-law-governor.html | title = Oklahoma Governor Signs Bill That Bans Most Abortions| first1 = Luke | last1 = Vander Ploeg | date= May 25, 2022| access-date = May 25, 2022| work = New York Times}}{{cite news | last1= Paulsen | first1=Stephen |title=The legal loophole that helped end abortion rights | url=https://www.courthousenews.com/the-legal-loophole-that-helped-end-abortion-rights/| date=July 30, 2022 | newspaper=Courthouse News Service | access-date=August 7, 2022}}

• [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3158038 The Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy], 104 Va. L. Rev. 934 (2018).
• [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2972974 Textualism and the Fourteenth Amendment], 69 Stan. L. Rev. 1237 (2017).
• [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3164003 Remembering the Boss], 84 U. Chi. L. Rev. 2291 (2017).
• [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2973002 Commentary, Capital Punishment and the Courts], 120 Harv. L. Rev. F. 269 (2017).
• [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3164008 Judicial Review and the Future of Federalism], 49 Ariz. St. L. J. 1091 (2017).
• [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1856232 Stare Decisis and Constitutional Text], 110 Mich. L. Rev. 1 (2011).
• [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1677651 Reconsidering Murdock: State-Law Reversals as Constitutional Avoidance], 77 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1335 (2010).
• [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1270717 Legislating Clear-Statement Regimes in National-Security Law], 43 Ga. L. Rev. 1059 (2009).
• [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=978971 Apprendi’s Domain], 2006 Sup. Ct. Rev. 297.
• [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4381961 Why Was Roe v. Wade Wrong?], in Geoffrey R. Stone and Lee Bollinger, eds., Roe v. Dobbs: The Past, Present, and Future of a Constitutional Right to Abortion (Oxford 2023).

• List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 9)

{{reflist}}

• [https://law.stanford.edu/directory/jonathan-mitchell/ Biography at Stanford Law School] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170915041658/https://law.stanford.edu/directory/jonathan-mitchell/ |date=2017-09-15 }}
• [https://www.c-span.org/person/?jonathanmitchell Jonathan Mitchell on C-SPAN]
• [https://www.oyez.org/advocates/jonathan_f_mitchell Appearances at the U.S. Supreme Court] from the Oyez Project
• [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=791842 SSRN page for Jonathan F. Mitchell]

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Category:Living people

Category:1976 births

Category:21st-century American lawyers

Category:Antonin Scalia Law School faculty

Category:Law clerks of J. Michael Luttig

Category:Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States

Category:Solicitors general of Texas

Category:Stanford Law School faculty

Category:Texas anti-abortion legislation

Category:First Trump administration personnel

Category:University of Chicago Law School alumni

Category:University of Chicago Law School faculty

Category:University of Texas School of Law faculty

Category:Donald Trump attorneys