Dean John Sauer, currently the 49th solicitor general of the United States, plays a key role in the Trump administration’s efforts to advance extremist positions in cases involving immigration, tariffs, voting rights, and federal agency authority.
Since April 2025, Sauer has served as Trump administration’s chief advocate before the Supreme Court in landmark cases that include Trump v. Barbara (2026) (attempting to undo birthright citizenship) and Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc. (2024) (defending the Trump administration’s proposed tariffs). Sauer has also represented Trump personally in the 2024 Supreme Court case Trump v. United States (helping Trump gain presidential immunity for “official acts”) and defended Trump in the New York civil lawsuit where Trump was found liable for sexually abusing journalist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s. Weeks after Trump selected Sauer to serve as solicitor general, he also helped Trump file a brief in a Supreme Court case on whether security concerns required TikTok to be sold or shut down.
Background
Born in St. Louis, Missouri on November 13, 1974, Sauer graduated from Duke University in 1997 with B.A. in philosophy and a B.S in electrical engineering. He is a former Rhodes Scholar and received a theology degree from the University of Oxford in 1999. Sauer later attended Harvard Law School, where he served on the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude in 2004. Post-Harvard, Sauer clerked for Judge J. Michael Luttig and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
After his clerkships, Sauer joined the influential and conservative Cooper & Kirk for less than two years before returning to Missouri in 2008 to serve as an assistant federal prosecutor. In 2015, he founded his own firm, the James Otis Law Group.
In private practice, Sauer represented activists associated with the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress, who were sued after secretly recording meetings of the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood. The National Abortion Federation accused Center for Medical Progress of orchestrating a coordinated campaign to harass abortion providers. Sauer also represented Catholic theologians in a Supreme Court case, siding with retailer Hobby Lobby when it argued it didn’t need to provide contraceptive coverage in its employee health care plans.
Sauer served as Missouri’s solicitor general from 2017 to 2023, overlapping with then-Missouri Attorney General now-Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). During Sauer’s tenure at the Missouri AG’s office, he led a 2019 case involving the sinister tracking of menstrual cycles of Planned Parenthood’s patients as part of a broader effort to restrict abortion. He mercilessly defended Missouri’s health department over its effort to revoke the license for the state’s only abortion clinic. A Missouri health department director testified that he had compiled a spreadsheet tracking the menstrual cycles of Planned Parenthood patients in an attempt to identify what he described as “failed abortions.”
Sauer also defended a state law designed to prevent Medicaid funding from being directed to Planned Parenthood, part of a broader push to cut off financial support for the organization. Following Trump’s defeat in 2020, Sauer led legal efforts in his capacity as Missouri’s solicitor general to overturn the results of the presidential election. Sauer also vigorously defended Trump in the private sector after his tenure.
Pre-Solicitor General Cases
- Trump v. United States: Sauer represented Trump in this precedent-shattering immunity case before the Supreme Court that granted the president sweeping immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. At the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Sauer notoriously argued that the president could not be indicted if he ordered an assassination on his political rivals unless he was impeached first. Sauer repeated this dangerous assertion during oral argument at the Supreme Court.
- Between Trump’s announcement of his nomination to be solicitor general and his confirmation process, Sauer filed two briefs on behalf of Trump personally at the Supreme Court. On January 7, 2025 Sauer intervened in Trump v. New York, requesting the justices halt Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case. On December 27, 2024, Sauer submitted a brief on behalf of Trump requesting the justices halt the federal law that sought to ban TikTok. Multiple constitutional law commentators have raised the alarm about these actions, with one esteemed scholar arguing that they could inflict “long-term, harmful effects on the government’s relationship with the court.”
Cases Argued While Solicitor General
- Trump v. Barbara (2026): In the birthright citizenship case, Sauer argued that the Constitution’s Citizenship Clause should be interpreted more narrowly than courts have traditionally done, focusing on the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” He contended that children born in the United States to parents who are in the country illegally or only temporarily — such as tourists or visa holders — are not fully subject to U.S. jurisdiction and therefore are not automatically entitled to citizenship. Sauer framed this position as a correction of what he called longstanding misunderstandings of the 14th Amendment, asserting that citizenship should depend on a stronger connection and allegiance to the United States. His argument challenged more than a century of precedent recognizing broad birthright citizenship and sought to give the Court a basis for allowing the executive branch to limit automatic citizenship by reinterpretation of constitutional text.
- Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump & Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc. (2024): Sauer argued that Trump’s tariffs were legal because Congress had already given the president broad authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to respond to national emergencies affecting foreign commerce. He claimed that the law’s power to regulate importation naturally includes the ability to impose tariffs, since tariffs are a traditional way of controlling trade. Sauer also stated that the tariffs were meant to address major problems like trade imbalances and drug trafficking, framing them as necessary tools of foreign policy rather than ordinary economic measures. Sauer further argued that the tariffs should be viewed as regulatory actions, not taxes, meaning they did not violate Congress’s constitutional authority over taxation. According to Sauer, any revenue raised was only incidental, while the real goal was to influence foreign countries and protect U.S. interests. He also maintained that courts should give the president broad deference in this area because foreign affairs are primarily an executive responsibility and Congress intentionally granted wide discretion in emergencies. The Supreme Court rejected that argument and held that Trump’s tariffs were unconstitutional, reasoning that tariffs are a form of taxation and therefore fall under congressional rather than executive authority.