Sidley’s Loss-Eaton Making Supreme Court Debut in Saudi Spy Case

Tobias Loss-Eaton will make his first appearance before the US Supreme Court next week, arguing that federal prosecutors chose the wrong venue to charge a former Twitter employee convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia.

The Sidley Austin partner represents Ahmad Abouammo, who was convicted of providing personal information about Saudi dissidents to individuals connected to the Saudi royal family.

The case reached Loss-Eaton through the Carter G. Phillips/Sidley Austin Supreme Court Clinic at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. A student flagged the venue issue after the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld Abouammo’s conviction.

Loss-Eaton, who co-directs the clinic and has been involved in other high court cases but hasn’t argued from the lectern, wrote the successful cert petition.

He’s been preparing for oral arguments in partnership with federal defenders from the Northern District of California—who represented Abouammo before the Ninth Circuit—saying it’s been the “platonic ideal” of a co-counsel relationship.

His goal, he said, has been not to over-drill, but to focus on a series of moot courts testing the kinds of one-step-removed questions he expects the justices to press.

“One question certainly would be, what if venue is an element of the offense? Does that matter constitutionally?” Loss-Eaton said. “Is conspiracy different? Conspiracy is a different beast and has always been subject to broader venue rules.”

Abouammo, a former media partnerships manager for Twitter—now X—was accused of obstruction of justice for sending FBI agents a falsified document during an interview at his home in Seattle. Although Abouammo lived in Washington, prosecutors brought the obstruction charge in the Northern District of California, where the FBI’s San Francisco field office was running the investigation.

Federal public defenders argued that venue for the obstruction charge was improper. But a Ninth Circuit panel disagreed, holding that even though the obstruction statute contains no venue provision, circuit precedent allows prosecution either where the alleged criminal act occurred, Seattle, or where its effects were directed, Northern California.

The justices will consider whether venue can be proper in a district where no offense conduct took place as long as the statute’s intent element “contemplates” effects that could occur there.

Appellate Ambition

Loss-Eaton said he never seriously considered a career outside the law.

He studied political science at Brandeis University, where he minored in legal studies, and remained in Massachusetts for law school at Harvard. There, as a first-year student, he met his wife, Morgan Kennedy.

“We had assigned seats next to each other in civ pro,” Loss-Eaton said. “So we always joke we have the registrar at Harvard to thank for our marriage.”

After graduating, Loss-Eaton clerked for Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and then for Judge Norman H. Stahl of the First Circuit.

“Both of my clerkships convinced me that appellate law was the true love of my practice and the thing I was really good at,” Loss-Eaton said.

He and Morgan Kennedy moved to Washington in 2013. Kennedy practiced communications law at Covington & Burling before serving at the Federal Trade Commission. She is now a senior policy counsel at Alphabet Inc.'s Google.

Loss-Eaton joined Sidley Austin, where his practice focuses on litigation and regulatory matters involving the transportation industry.

From the start, he said, he sought to be as involved as possible in the firm’s Supreme Court clinic with Northwestern.

“I just couldn’t get enough of the work,” he said.

He has been part of teams on several cases that reached the high court, including serving as lead brief writer in a 2020 case examining whether states must recognize the insanity defense.

Loss-Eaton and Kennedy have a 3-year-old son, who he said has largely replaced the time he once devoted to hobbies. But he has maintained a lifelong allegiance to the Boston Red Sox, describing himself as “the rare glass-half-full Red Sox fan.”

“To have four World Championships in my young adulthood to adulthood, I feel really lucky,” he said. “I’m a proud Red Sox fan and I’m really optimistic about how this year looks.”

The Red Sox open their season against the Texas Rangers on March 27. Loss-Eaton will take his own opening turn before the justices three days later, when the court hears arguments March 30.

The case is Ahmad Abouammo v. United States, U.S., No. 25-5146, scheduled for oral argument on 3/30/26.