A Brief Guide to Jonathan Mitchell, the Forrest Gump of the Conservative Culture Wars

[In It to Win It]

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Even if you don’t immediately recognize Jonathan Mitchell’s name, you’re probably familiar with his handiwork. Mitchell is the Texas lawyer who invented the dystopian enforcement mechanism for SB8, Texas’s six-week abortion ban, which allows private citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion—and, if they win, to pocket $10,000 for their efforts. This structure was an attempt to skirt Roe v. Wade, then still in effect, by relieving government officials of enforcement responsibility, thus making legal challenges procedurally difficult. When the Supreme Court upheld SB8, it was a preview of what came a few months later: a Court comfortable with overturning Roe at last.

But Mitchell is much more than the man who helped make it legal for anti-choicers to moonlight as bounty hunters. In the aftermath of Roe’s demise, Mitchell has been working to roll back same-sex marriage rights, gut the Affordable Care Act, and ban books that cover race, LGBTQ issues, or whatever else Tucker Carlson happens to be upset about at that particular moment. If a culture war is going on, Mitchell is in the thick of it, representing people who used to be relegated to the legal fringes, but are now engaged in a concerted effort to move the law much further to the right.

Mitchell’s résumé is a laundry list of fancy conservative legal jobs: After law school, he started off his career clerking for two conservative judges—federal appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig, and the late Justice Antonin Scalia. He then did a three-year stint in the Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush. Between government jobs, he taught at two conservative law schools, the University of Chicago and the Antonin Scalia Law School.

The rest of Mitchell’s caseload reads like a list of grievances read aloud at CPAC. He represents Dianne Hensley, a Texas justice of the peace who doesn’t want to perform same-sex marriages because her cramped version of Christianity forbids it. He represents George Stewart, who is suing over his rejection by medical schools in Texas, arguing he was passed over for less qualified Black candidates. If this sounds familiar, that’s because the Supreme Court is considering two cases right now that are likely to result in the end of race-conscious admissions to colleges and universities. Mitchell’s case could be part of a belt-and-suspenders approach in case the Court doesn’t come down the way he wants, and/or an insurance policy in case the Court doesn’t deal with admissions to postgraduate institutions in those opinions. Regardless, it’s another hot-button political issue in which Mitchell is on precisely the side you’d guess.

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