Aaron Nielson, a law professor at Brigham Young University, will be Texas’ new attorney general, taking the state’s most high-profile legal battles all the way to the US Supreme Court.
Nielson, who is taking a one-year leave of absence from BYU, joins the embattled office at a difficult time. He replaces Judd Stone, who took a temporary leave of absence to represent Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his impeachment trial and then resigned to start his own law firm.
The Texas Senate acquitted Paxton, but the tumult of the trial and the allegations that led to it have tarnished the office’s reputation as a leading light of the conservative legal revolution.
But Texas remains one of the most aggressive litigants against the Biden administration. The solicitor general handles the state’s appellate cases, arguing before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans and the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as the state’s high court. Since its creation in 1998, the office has attracted the best and brightest of the conservative legal elite from across the country.
Past solicitors general include US Senator Ted Cruz, 5th Circuit Judge James Ho and conservative lawyer Jonathan Mitchell, best known for drafting Texas’ novel ban on abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. Lawyers who got their start in this office now sit behind the bench in courtrooms across Texas and the country.
Nielson’s thoroughbred conservative legal pedigree is similar to that of his predecessors. He attended Harvard Law School and clerked for US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and 5th Circuit Judge Jerry Smith.
Nielson also clerked for Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a conservative George W. Bush appointee to the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Unlike the other circuit courts, which hear cases based on geography, the D.C. Circuit focuses primarily on disputes involving federal agencies.
Texas often visits the D.C. Circuit in its crusade against the “administrative state,” a conservative term for federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration and the regulations they implement.
Fittingly, Texas’ new solicitor general is “one of the nation’s leading experts on the Administrative Procedure Act,” according to a press release announcing his hiring. He has served as a committee chair for the Federal Administrative Conference of the United States and was a member of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.
Nielson is also a visiting fellow at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, an influential institution in conservative circles, and is active in the Federalist Society. The State Bar website does not show Nielson as licensed to practice law in Texas.
“Nielson’s talent and expertise are virtually unparalleled and have earned him a national reputation in the legal community,” Paxton said in a statement. “He will be a tremendous asset to our office and to our state’s appellate leadership on the great legal issues of our time.”
Nielson will inherit a caseload that reflects the outsized influence of the Texas attorney general’s office. Texas is currently involved in legal challenges over abortion, book bans, immigration, environmental regulations, LGBT rights and health care, among other hot-button issues.
At least some of these challenges are expected to end up before the US Supreme Court. In 2020, Neilson was appointed by the high court to argue Collins v. Yellen, a case involving the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
“It is a great honour to serve the state of Texas as solicitor general,” Nielson said in a statement. “I look forward to working with the team Attorney General Paxton has assembled and to leading and learning from the world-class attorneys in the Solicitor General Division who represent Texas so well in our nation’s appellate courts.”