Sally Yates
American lawyer, 36th United States Deputy Attorney General
Sally Quillian Yates (born Sally Caroline Quillian; August 20, 1960) is an American lawyer. From 2010 to 2015, she was United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. In 2015, she was appointed United States Deputy Attorney General by President Barack Obama. Following the inauguration of President Donald Trump and the departure of Attorney General Loretta Lynch at noon on January 20, 2017, Yates served as acting United States Attorney General for 10 days.
Trump dismissed Yates for insubordination on January 30, after she instructed the Justice Department not to make legal arguments defending Executive Order 13769, which temporarily banned the admission of refugees and barred travel from certain Muslim-majority countries (later to include North Korea and Venezuela) on the grounds that terrorists were using the U.S. refugee resettlement program to enter the country. The ban was labeled as a "Muslim ban" by both Trump and his campaign's website. Rather than defend it, Yates stated the order was neither defensible in court nor consistent with the Constitution. Although large portions of the order were initially blocked by federal courts, the Supreme Court ultimately upheld a revised version.
Following her dismissal, Yates returned to private practice. She was considered a candidate for Attorney General in the Biden administration.
The public source identifies “Sally Yates” as american lawyer, 36th United States Deputy Attorney General. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Sally, Yates and American.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21062855. VIAF identifies the subject as 198144647693121874753. The Library of Congress control number is no2015130776. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 2010, 2015 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sally Yates” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.