Strategic choices by the Office of the Solicitor General have coincided with several recent rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court involving executive authority and birthright citizenship. Solicitor General D. John Sauer and his predecessor, Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris, employed litigation strategies that separated constitutional questions from procedural or factual ones in cases involving President Trump’s executive orders and personnel firings.
The position of solicitor general, established by Congress in 1870, manages federal government litigation before the Supreme Court and is frequently referred to as the "tenth justice" due to its influence. The office is involved in approximately 90% of the court's work and participates in roughly 50 of the 65 to 70 oral arguments held in a typical term. While the office generally defends acts of Congress, it may decline to do so if lawyers find no good-faith basis for a law's constitutionality.
In the matter of birthright citizenship, Harris requested an emergency order in early 2025 to block nationwide injunctions against an executive order restricting citizenship for children of undocumented parents. By focusing the initial argument on the jurisdiction of lower courts rather than the 14th Amendment, the administration secured a June 2025 ruling limiting nationwide injunctions. Although the court later invalidated the citizenship order itself in June 2026, the procedural victory remains in place.
Similar strategies were observed in cases regarding the president's authority to fire independent agency officials. In *Trump v. Slaughter*, Sauer argued that the Constitution’s separation of powers allowed the president to fire a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member. The court agreed, overturning the 1935 *Humphrey’s Executor* precedent. In contrast, in *Trump v. Cook*, Sauer argued that a Federal Reserve Board member could be fired for cause due to alleged mortgage misrepresentations. The court ruled in favor of the board member, citing the tradition of central banking independence.
The scale of this influence is reflected in the Department of Justice's high success rate with emergency requests. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the department filed at least 28 requests for interim relief during the second Trump administration, succeeding in 21 of them. This means that in approximately 75% of these high-stakes emergency filings, the administration successfully paused lower court rulings, affecting the immediate enforcement of federal regulations and executive actions across all 50 states.
For the average citizen, these strategies determine which laws are enforced while litigation continues. A person born in the U.S. to undocumented parents would have seen their legal status subject to different rules depending on the timing of these specific court orders. Currently, the legal landscape regarding citizenship remains in flux; following the court's June 2026 invalidation of the first order, President Trump issued a new executive order on August 6, 2026, to continue his efforts to restrict birthright citizenship. Further litigation and court dates regarding this new order are expected to follow.