{"id":843279,"date":"2026-09-10T19:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T19:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/843279\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T19:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T19:50:11","slug":"trump-administration-asks-justices-to-decide-on-its-appointments-of-acting-u-s-attorneys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/843279\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration asks justices to decide on its appointments of acting U.S. attorneys"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arguing that a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit<\/a> \u201cthreatens to inject mass confusion into five U.S. Attorney\u2019s Offices in the Ninth Circuit that collectively handle over 8000 civil and criminal cases annually,\u201d the Trump administration on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court<\/a> to weigh in on the legality of President Donald Trump\u2019s appointment of an acting U.S. attorney in Nevada. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that the appointment of Sigal Chattah (as well as others around the country) was not only lawful, but also \u201ca critical tool that the Executive Branch has used without meaningful objection for 25 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until Jan. 17, 2025<\/a>, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada was Jason Frierson, who was nominated by then-President Joe Biden. Frierson stepped down shortly before Trump\u2019s second inauguration. In March, then-Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi appointed Chattah as the interim U.S. attorney, effective April 1. Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act<\/a>, the federal law that governs how the executive branch can temporarily staff vacant positions that require presidential appointment and confirmation by the Senate, interim officers can serve for 120 days.<\/p>\n

Two days before her interim appointment was set to expire, Chattah resigned. Bondi then designated her as the first assistant U.S. attorney. Under the FVRA, Bondi explained, that would give Chattah the \u201cauthority to serve as Acting United States Attorney upon a vacancy in that office.\u201d Bondi also gave Chattah the powers of a U.S. attorney for legal proceedings in Nevada.<\/p>\n

Three men who had been indicted on felony charges in Nevada after Chattah\u2019s designation as the first assistant U.S. attorney sought to have their indictments dismissed or, at the very least, Chattah, whose name appeared in the signature blocks of their indictments as \u201cActing U.S. Attorney,\u201d disqualified.<\/p>\n

A federal district judge held, and the 9th Circuit agreed<\/a>, that Chattah was not eligible to serve as the acting U.S. attorney, and that she should be disqualified from playing any role in the prosecution of the defendants\u2019 cases. But they declined to dismiss the indictments altogether.<\/p>\n

In a 34-page opinion, Judge Eric Miller of the 9th Circuit wrote that \u201cthe text and structure\u201d of the FVRA are \u201cunambiguous: The statute does not permit the executive to fill an existing vacancy by designating a new first assistant.\u201d Instead, he reasoned, the FVRA \u201cprovides that a first assistant automatically succeeds to a vacant office\u201d only if the first assistant was first assistant when the principal office became vacant. The automatic-succession rule, he concluded, \u201cdoes not apply to a first assistant\u201d \u2013 like Chattah \u2013 \u201cwho never served under a validly appointed official.\u201d Moreover, Miller continued, the attorney general cannot achieve the same result \u201cby delegating all of the functions and duties of the U.S. Attorney to someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his petition<\/a> seeking review of the 9th Circuit\u2019s decision, Sauer told the justices that, especially after the transition from one presidential administration to another, there is often no first assistant who is already in place and available to serve in an acting capacity. \u201cFor decades,\u201d to address this problem, he said, \u201ca commonly selected option has been that, after the vacancy arises, the agency head appoints a new first assistant, thus making that person the acting officer.\u201d Indeed, he noted, both Republican and Democratic administrations have used this path in the solicitor general\u2019s office, naming a principal deputy solicitor general who then serves as an acting solicitor general.<\/p>\n

Nothing in the text of the FVRA, Sauer contended, indicates that only a first assistant who was in that role before a vacancy occurred can serve in an acting capacity. To the contrary, he suggested, the text provides that anyone who is currently serving as the first assistant to the now-vacant office can serve as the acting official, rather than restricting the acting official to someone who served as a first assistant to the former official.<\/p>\n

Along the same lines, Sauer continued, \u201cnothing in the FVRA\u2019s text bars an agency head from delegating a vacant office\u2019s delegable duties to another official, particularly when those powers are not exclusive to the vacant office but instead vested independently in the agency head.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the Supreme Court should grant review, Sauer emphasized, because the courts of appeals have interpreted the key provisions of the FVRA differently. In addition to the 9th Circuit in her case, other federal courts have similarly invalidated the appointments of other acting U.S. attorneys during the Trump administration, including Alina Habba<\/a> in New Jersey, John Sarcone<\/a> in New York, Lindsey Halligan<\/a> in Virginia, and Bill Essayli<\/a> in California. By contrast, Sauer said, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has reached<\/a> the opposite conclusion on the question of a senior official\u2019s ability to delegate duties to a more junior official. That court, Sauer emphasized, held that the FVRA \u201cdoes not \u2018restrict who may perform\u2019\u201d the \u201cdelegable\u201d duties of an official requiring Senate confirmation \u201cwhen he was absent.\u201d<\/p>\n

The defendants challenging Chattah\u2019s appointment have until Oct. 8 to file their brief opposing review, although that deadline may be extended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arguing that a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit \u201cthreatens to inject mass…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":843280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,229199,3,8306,357041,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-843279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-court-news","tag-news","tag-open","tag-post-type-post","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}