In “Biden lawyer who defended affirmative action grapples with diversity in her own office,” Washington Post writers Tobi Raji and Theodoric Meyer report about the connection between U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar’s argument to the U.S. Supreme Court in the recent affirmative action case — Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023) 143 S.Ct. 2141 — and the makeup of her office.
Prelogar “cited the lack of diversity in a group of people the justices know well: the lawyers who argue before them. Just two of 27 lawyers who appeared before the court over the next two weeks would be women, Prelogar told the justices.” The article also notes that “a similar lack of diversity to the one Prelogar pointed out in her argument has persisted for years in the solicitor general’s office.” According to a Post study, “[o]ver the past dozen terms, nearly three-quarters of Supreme Court arguments made by lawyers in the office have been delivered by men,” “[m]ore than 80 percent have been made by White lawyers,” “[n]o Hispanic lawyer has argued a case for the office since 2016,” and “[n]o Black lawyer has done so since 2012.”
Now-California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger is identified as that “last Black lawyer to [argue before the court].”
Before her appointment to California’s Supreme Court in late 2014, Kruger served six years as an Assistant to the Solicitor General and as Acting Principal Deputy Solicitor General, and she argued 12 high court cases. She was reportedly offered — and turned down — the Solicitor General’s job before President Biden chose Prelogar. Kruger was also a leading candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court seat that went to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.