Jonathan Franklin Mitchell

Jonathan Franklin Mitchell Image source.
Professional / Career Details
Name	Jonathan Franklin Mitchell
Description	5th Solicitor General of Texas (2010-12-10 to 2015-01-05)
Profession	Attorney: Mitchell Law PLLC, Austin, Texas  |  LinkedIn.com Former government official
Employment history	Show 2018-06 to present: Principal,  Mitchell Law PLLC (Austin, Texas) 2015-06 to 2018-06: Visiting Professor of Law, Stanford Law School (Stanford, CA) 2015-06 to 2016-06: Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University (Stanford, CA) 2015-01 to 2015-05: Searle Visiting Professor of Law, University of Texas School of Law (Austin, TX) 2010-12 to 2015-01; Adjunct Professor, University of Texas School of Law (Austin, TX) 2010-12 to 2015-01: Solicitor General of Texas (Austin, TX) 2008-07 to 2010-12: Assistant Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law (now: Antonin Scalia Law School; Arlington, VA) 2008-07 to 2010-12: George Mason University School of Law (now: Antonin Scalia Law School; Arlington, VA) 2006-06 to 2008-07: Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Chicago Law School (Chicago, IL) 2006-01 to 2006-06: Visiting Researcher, Georgetown University Law Center (Washington, D.C.) 2003-08 to 2005-12: Attorney-Adviser, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S Department of Justice (Washington, D.C.) 2002-07 to 2003-07: Law Clerk, Justice Antonin Scalia,  Supreme Court of the United States (Washington, D.C.) 2001-06 to 2002-06: Law Clerk, Judge J. Michael Luttig,  U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Alexandria, VA) Member, Federalist Society  [source]
Personal Details
Name	Jonathan Franklin Mitchell
Disambiguation	Not (same name; similar background): Jonathan F. "Jon" Mitchell (Mayor of New Bedford)
Born	1976-09-02
Birthplace	Upland, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Parents	Mother: probably Hannah N. Mitchell (Arlington, VA; born 1960-11; Jonathan Mitchell, related, also lived in Arlington, VA.)
Spouse	Anne E. Mitchell (née Hurd; born 1977-01-24), Everett, WA
Siblings	Brother(s): 6 (Jonathan Mitchell the oldest of 7 brothers)
Known residences	Current address: Everett, WA (Jul 2016 - Oct 2021) Previous addresses: source 1  |  source 2)
Education	Wheaton College, Illinois (Evangelical liberal arts college) University of Chicago: Juris Doctor (1998-2001)
Affiliations	Order of the Coif (honor society for U.S. law school graduates) University of Chicago Law Review
Religion	Christian (devout)
Ideology	anti-abortion Christian right

Background

Jonathan Franklin Mitchell (born September 2, 1976) is an American attorney and former government official. From 2010 to 2015, he was the Solicitor General of Texas. Jonathan F. Mitchell has argued four cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, and authored more than one hundred briefs.

Jonathan F. Mitchell has helped to author anti-abortion bills. In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order declining to block a Texas anti-abortion bill, which effectively banned abortion in the state, from going into effect pending the resolution of constitutional challenges against the law.

Early life and Education

Jonathan F. Mitchell was raised in religious Christian home in Pennsylvania. Jonathan F. Mitchell had six brothers. Jonathan F. Mitchell attended Wheaton College, an Evangelical liberal arts college in Illinois. Mitchell received a Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School in 2001. Jonathan F. Mitchell was an articles editor of the University of Chicago Law Review, and is a member of Order of the Coif.

Career

After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, from 2001 to 2002, and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States from 2002 to 2003. After clerking, he served as an attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice. Jonathan F. Mitchell was appointed as Solicitor General of Texas in 2010. Jonathan F. Mitchell was a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2015 to 2016.

After his tenure as Solicitor General of Texas, Jonathan F. Mitchell sought out academic appointments, but failed to find a tenure track position. After Donald Trump became president, Mitchell sought positions in the Donald Trump administration. Trump unsuccessfully nominated Mitchell to serve as the chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS). In 2018, Mitchell created State Bar of Texas entry  |  LinkedIn.com , local copy].

In 2016, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a Texas anti-abortion bill that Jonathan F. Mitchell helped to write. In 2021, an increasingly conservative Supreme Court issued an order declining to block a Texas anti-abortion bill (the Texas Heartbeat Act of 2021) from going into effect, pending the resolution of constitutional challenges to the bill, which defied Roe v. Wade. The challenged Texas bill de facto banned abortion in the state of Texas.

Jonathan F. Mitchell has argued cases and written briefs before the Supreme Court of the United States. In an amicus curiae brief for Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Mitchell and a colleague argue that overturning Roe v. Wade could lead to the reversal of other "lawless" court decisions such as those establishing a right to same-sex marriage.

Publications

Additional Reading

With a challenge to the U.S. Affordable Care Act  (ACA) still pending at the Supreme Court of the United States,   conservatives are continuing to launch legal attacks on the law, including a case in which a Texas federal judge seems open to ending the requirement that most Americans must receive preventive services like mammograms free of charge.

Businesses and individuals challenging the Affordable Care Act  (ACA)'s first-dollar coverage mandate for preventive services have legal standing and legitimate constitutional grounds and statutory grounds to proceed with their lawsuit to overturn it, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor   ruled late last month (2022-02) in Fort Worth, Texas. Reed O'Connor, who previously found the entire ACA to be unconstitutional, denied most of the federal government's motion to dismiss the case, Kelley v. Azar  [pdf].

The plaintiffs cite religious objections and free-market objections to the ACA requirement in their class action suit against the government, seeking to halt enforcement of the requirement.

The Affordable Care Act  (ACA) requires most private individual and group health plans and some Medicaid programs to cover recommended preventive services for adults and children without charging deductibles or copayments. Medicare's preventive care benefits also were enhanced.

These changes have made it more affordable for Americans to get a wide range of services, such as cancer screenings, contraception, HIV prevention drugs, vaccines, tobacco cessation treatment, alcohol abuse counseling, and domestic violence counseling.

[ ... snip ... ]

The attorney representing the plaintiffs, Jonathan Franklin Mitchell of Austin, Texas - a former Texas solicitor general - declined to speak on the record about the case.

Reed O'Connor - a Republican-appointed conservative - could issue a preliminary injunction blocking first-dollar coverage of preventive services nationwide, which Reed O'Connor did in an earlier Affordable Care Act  (ACA) lawsuit involving coverage for contraceptives. If Reed O'Connnor does that - or if Reed O'Connor moves directly to a summary decision in favor of the plaintiffs - the Biden administration likely would appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals  [United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit] - a conservative court that partly upheld O'Connor's 2018 finding that the ACA is unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling soon in that case, California v. Texas, in which 21 Republican attorneys general claimed that the United States Congress' decision in 2017 as part of its tax cut bill to zero out the ACA's monetary penalty on individuals for not obtaining health insurance made the entire law unconstitutional.

[ ... snip ... ]

"This case provides a vehicle for the conservative legal movement to cripple the American administrative state," said Nicholas Bagley, a University of Michigan law professor who also studies ACA litigation. "I suspect this will get to the [U.S.] Supreme Court." Reed O'Connor also permitted the plaintiffs' claim that the mandate to cover drugs to prevent HIV infection in high-risk people violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993  (RFRA) by forcing them to subsidize "homosexual behavior" to which they have religious objections. The U.S. Supreme Court, Reed O'Connor wrote, "has held that compelling the purchase of insurance that includes medications that violate one's sincerely held religious beliefs can be a violation of the RFRA."

[ ... snip ... ]

---

• [📌 pinned article] [NPR.org, 2022-03-26] How a Texas court decision threatens Affordable Care Act protections.

Tom York and Mary Jo York are a health-conscious couple, who faithfully go in for annual physicals and periodic colorectal cancer screening tests. Mary Jo York - whose mother and aunts had breast cancer - also gets regular mammography tests. The Yorks, who live in New Berlin, Wisconsin, are enrolled in Chorus Community Health Plans, which - like most of the nation's health plans - is required by the [U.S.] Affordable Care Act  (ACA) to pay for those preventive services (and more than 100 others) without charging deductibles or copays. Tom York, 57, says he appreciates the ACAs mandate because, until this year (2022), the deductible on his plan was $5,000 - meaning that without that ACA provision he and his wife would have had to pay full price for those services, until the deductible was met. "A colonoscopy could cost $4,000," he says. "I can't say I would have skipped it, but I would have had to think hard about it."

Recent court decision may increase consumer health costs

Now health plans and self-insured employers — those that pay workers' and dependents' medical costs themselves — may consider imposing cost sharing for preventive services on their members and workers. That's because of a federal judge's 2022-09-07 ruling in a Texas lawsuit filed by conservative groups claiming that the Affordable Care Act (ACA)'s mandate that health plans pay the full cost of preventive services is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor agreed with them. Reed O'Connor ruled that the members of one of the three groups that make coverage recommendations - the United States Preventive Services Task Force - were not lawfully appointed under the Constitution of the United States because they were not nominated by the president of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate.

[ ... snip ... ]

In the same ruling last week (2022-09-07), Reed O'Connor held that requiring the plaintiffs to pay for HIV prevention drugs violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. Reed O'Connor is also considering throwing out the mandate for first-dollar coverage for contraceptives, which the plaintiffs also challenged under that statute. Reed O'Connor postponed ruling on that and legal remedies until after he receives additional briefs from the parties to the lawsuit on 2022-09-16. No matter what Reed O'Connor does, the legal case is likely to be appealed by the federal government, and could reach the Supreme Court of the United States.

[ ... snip ... ]

The most probable services to be targeted for cost sharing are HIV prevention and contraception, says Dr. Jeff Levin-Scherz - population health leader at WTW (formerly Willis Towers Watson), who advises employers on health plans. Studies have shown that eliminating cost sharing boosts the use of preventive services and saves lives. After the Affordable Care Act (ACA) required that Medicare cover colorectal cancer screenings without cost sharing, diagnoses of early-stage colorectal cancer increased 8% per year, improving life expectancy for thousands of seniors, according to a 2017 study published in the journal Health Affairs.

[ ... snip ... ]

One service of particular concern is preexposure prophylaxis for HIV, or PrEP, a highly effective drug regimen that prevents high-risk people from acquiring HIV. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit in Texas claimed that having to pay for PrEP forces them to subsidize "homosexual behavior", to which they have religious objections.

Since 2020, health plans have been required to fully cover PrEP drugs and associated lab tests and doctor visits that otherwise can cost thousands of dollars a year. Of the 1.1 million people who could benefit from PrEP, 44% are Black and 25% are Hispanic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many also are low-income. Before the PrEP coverage rule took effect, only about 10% of eligible Black and Hispanic people had started PrEP treatment because of PrEP's high cost.

[ ... snip ... ]

---

• [RewireNewsGroup.com, 2021-11-29] Conservatives Assume They've Already Won the Big Supreme Court Abortion Case.  A Supreme Court newbie is defending Mississippi's abortion ban and asking the justices to dismantle Roe v. Wade.

• [NPR.org, 2021-11-29] As the Supreme Court considers Roe v. Wade, a look at how abortion became legal.

On Friday [2021-10-15], the Biden administration announced that it planned to appeal to the Supreme Court an order from a lower court issued last week, which kept in place a restrictive Texas law that outlaws abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy.

A three-judge panel in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit lifted a previous injunction from an appellate judge that had blocked the law's enforcement. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) then sought to have that panel place a temporary stay on its own ruling until formal arguments against the law could be heard, which it refused to do on Thursday [2021-10-14].

In response, the DOJ said it would appeal the Fifth Circuit Court's refusal to place a stay on the law, also known as Senate Bill 8, directly to the Supreme Court - but it didn't state specifically when it would make such an appeal. "The Justice Department intends to ask the Supreme Court to vacate the 5th Circuit's stay of the preliminary injunction against Texas Senate Bill 8," a statement from DOJ spokesperson Anthony Coley said.

The Texas law bars all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy - so early on in the pregnancy that many people don't yet realize they are pregnant - and contains no exceptions for rape or incest. Rather than having the state enforce the law, private citizens are incentivized to sue people they believe helped someone procure an abortion, including abortion providers themselves. Petitioners are allowed to sue for sums of up to $10,000.

A federal judge on Wednesday [2021-10-06] ordered Texas to suspend the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S., calling it an "offensive deprivation" of a constitutional right by banning most abortions in the nation's second-most populous state since September 2021.

The order by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman is the first legal blow to the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8, which until now had withstood a wave of early challenges. In the weeks since the restrictions took effect, Texas abortion providers say the impact has been "exactly what we feared."

In a 113-page opinion, Pitman took Texas to task over the law, saying Republican lawmakers had "contrived an unprecedented and transparent statutory scheme" by leaving enforcement solely in the hands of private citizens, who are entitled to collect $10,000 in damages if they bring successful lawsuits against abortion providers who violate the restrictions.

[ ... snip ... ]

Advocates for reproductive freedom and LGTBQ+ equality on Saturday pointed to a legal brief filed in a U.S. Supreme Court case that could soon overturn as a crucial example of the broader goals of those fighting to end abortion rights across the United States. "It's never just been about fetuses. It's about controlling sex," tweeted Muhlenberg College assistant professor Jacqueline D. Antonovich, a historian of health and medicine.

Both Antonovich and Elie Mystal,   The Nation's justice correspondent, responded to a portion of the brief by New York University School of Law professor Melissa Murray that challenges previous rulings from the country's highest court on not only abortion but also LGBTQ+ rights. "Of course" the so-called "right to life" movement is also coming after cases that established key LGBTQ+ protections, said Mystal, "because it's never about 'life' and always about 'Christian fundamentalism.'"

The amicus brief (pdf) that Murray highlighted - co-authored by the architect of a new abortion ban in Texas - urges reversing Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that affirmed the constitutional right to pre-viability abortions, and the related 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The brief also takes aim at , a 2003 case that overturned homophobic state sodomy laws, and the 2015 equal marriage case Obergefell v. Hodges, suggesting that the court should not "hesitate to write an opinion that leaves those decisions hanging by a thread. Lawrence and Obergefell, while far less hazardous to human life, are just as lawless as Roe."

Zack Ford of the progressive group Alliance for Justice   said Saturday [2021-09-18] that "this is hardly surprising. Conservatives know they've got the Supreme Court in the palm of their hands and they'll ask for anything and everything, including the return of sodomy laws. Remember, ALL anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice views stem from the same desire to control bodies."

Return to Persagen.com