Jonathan Mitchell
Jonathan Mitchell is an anti-abortion legal operative who drafted the Texas Heartbeat Act, a six-week “bounty hunter” abortion bill that effectively banned abortion in the state by empowering private citizens to act as vigilanties to enforce a fetal heartbeat abortion ban. Mitchell has also filed dozens of petitions regarding “suspected” abortions and is also behind litigation that aims to restrict access to preventative HIV medication, known as PrEP.
Mitchell was also one of Trump’s lawyers in early 2024 in Trump v. Anderson, the case about the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to exclude Trump from the 2024 ballot under the 14th Amendment’s disqualification of insurrectionists from holding office. In his arguments before the Supreme Court, he claimed that the events of January 6th “did not qualify as insurrection.”
Mitchell Law also represented Cargill in Garland v. Cargill, the case in which the Supreme Court’s right wing supermajority invalidated the ATF’s bump stock ban issued after the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting. Mitchell presented their oral argument. He was on that case with the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), which has received millions from the Charles Koch fortune. Mitchell is also an advisor to NCLA.
Using the Texas abortion ban he was behind, Mitchell has filed dozens of petitions regarding ‘suspected’ abortions, and he represented a man seeking $1 million from each of his ex-wife’s friends in a wrongful death suit after they allegedly helped her find abortion pills. A brief Mitchell wrote with Adam Mortara for the Dobbs case called on the Court to overturn Roe and other decisions such as Obergefell (the right to same-sex marriage) that are grounded in substantive due process privacy rights. He is also behind litigation that aims to restrict access to preventative HIV medication, known as PrEP.
Between 2020 to 2022, Mitchell’s firm received more more than $700,000 in fees by Stephen Miller’s America First Legal Foundation, and more than $100,000 in grants ($36,517 in 2020, $56,599 in 2021, $8,810 in 2022) from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). ADF is designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its support of the idea that being LGBTQ+ should be a crime in the U.S. and abroad.”Mitchell also filed an amicus brief for America First in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that urged the Court to enforce Title VI and prohibit Harvard from using affirmative action in the university’s admission policies.
Mitchell Law has also represented amici in cases like Moore v. Harper which sought to give state legislatures unchecked power over federal elections and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District where the Supreme Court sided with a public school coach being able to coerce players into praying on field before games. Mitchell’s caseload, which includes defending book banners and attacking the Affordable Care Act, “reads like a list of grievances read aloud at CPAC,” according to one observer.
The Texas Tribune described Mitchell as “a solo practitioner who has sought out friendly single-judge divisions for lawsuits advancing brazen legal arguments.” For example, his challenge to a long-standing federal contraception program was well-received by Trump-appointed Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk and ultimately succeeded in stripping Texas teens’ confidential access to birth control. Mitchell also asked Judge Wesley Hendrix, the only active federal district judge in Lubbock, to take on affirmative action in Texas’ medical schools.
Mitchell has been described as “an adamant and litigious foe of the administrative state.” Mitchell selected Andrew Oldham, who now sits on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, as his Deputy Solicitor General in Texas. With Mitchell as Solicitor General and Oldham as his deputy, Texas filed lawsuit after lawsuit against the Obama administration in efforts to police any regulation, such as “to prevent the EPA from tackling climate change, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from helping former felons get hired, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from requiring contraception be covered by insurance plans,” according to Texas Tribune. At a 2016 Federalist Society event at the University of Chicago, Oldham declared “[the] alphabet soup of administrative agencies that dominate modern American life … is fundamentally illegitimate.”
Mitchell clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and spent three years in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice during the George W. Bush administration. He succeeded James Ho and was the Solicitor General of Texas from 2010 to 2015. In that role, he defended H.B. 2, a law that created undue burdens and restrictions on abortion care and that was struck down by the Supreme Court in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. Mitchell is an active Federalist Society contributor and has been on the guest list for at least one private Leonard Leo-hosted event in 2016. Mitchell worked on reviewing future executive orders as a volunteer attorney for Trump’s transition team after the 2016 election, and after attempted appointments in the first Trump administration, stands to be given a role in a second Trump Administration.
He was allegedly promised a senior position in the Office of Legal Counsel, but Trump ultimately nominated Mitchell to chair the Administrative Conference of the United States, an agency that advises on improving federal agencies’ inner processes and procedures. Mitchell was not confirmed after concerns were voiced about his role coordinating an anti-union legal campaign.