D. John Sauer

Dean John Sauer is a career litigator who, in private practice and public office, has worked tirelessly to attack the fundamental rights and liberties of millions of Americans. He has also acted as Trump’s personal lawyer and helped him evade consequences for multiple private and public transgressions. Since April 2025, he has served as Trump’s chief Supreme Court advocate, prioritizing Trump’s personal agenda at the expense of our democratic institutions and the rule of law. Sauer’s appalling track record began in private practice, where he frequently defended anti abortion groups. This pattern extended into his tenure as Missouri’s solicitor general, where he routinely spearheaded efforts to strip away reproductive freedom and health care access. In his most recent role as solicitor general for the Trump administration, Sauer has worked to insulate the administration from accountability and advance its extremist positions in cases involving immigration, tariffs, voting rights, and federal agency authority. 

• Fought For Trump’s King-Like Immunity. Sauer represented Trump in the precedent shattering Trump v. United States, in which the Supreme Court granted the president sweeping immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. Sauer notoriously argued that the president could not be indicted if he ordered an assassination on his political rivals unless he was impeached first. 

• Defended Trump’s Racist Attack on Birthright Citizenship. In Trump v. Barbara, Trump was sued after signing an executive order which would have stripped citizenship from American children born to undocumented parents. The order was part of Trump’s white supremacist campaign to restrict immigration from Black- and Brown-majority countries. Even though birthright citizenship is a clear constitutional right with over a century of affirmative precedent, Sauer argued that Trump should be allowed to rewrite the Constitution. 

Sauer made the racist undertones of the order clear when he asserted that people from “potentially hostile nations have flocked to give birth” in the U.S., reciting the unfounded and racially charged anchor-baby myth. Birthright citizenship is a fundamental aspect of the American identity and exists in light of centuries of legal history barring Black, Asian, and Indigenous people from citizenship. Yet Sauer shamelessly defended Trump’s thinly veiled attempt to create permanent underclasses that would undoubtedly fall across racial lines. 

• Argued that the President has the Right to Ignore the Constitution. In Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, Trump was sued after illegally attempting to impose astronomical tariffs on multiple countries. Constitutionally, only Congress has independent authority to impose tariffs, but Sauer argued that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — a law that does not mention tariffs once — gave Trump the power to “unilaterally impose unbounded tariffs and change them at will.” The Supreme Court rejected this assertion and held that Trump’s tariffs were unconstitutional. 

• Secretly Tracked Patients’ Menstrual Cycles as Part of Anti-abortion Efforts. While serving as Missouri’s solicitor general, Sauer led a 2019 case that involved a spreadsheet that the Missouri health department director testified tracked the menstrual cycles of Planned Parenthood patients in order to identify what he described as “failed abortions.” Sauer also zealously defended the Missouri health department’s attempts to revoke the license of the state’s only abortion clinic.