This Idaho native and Boise High graduate was just confirmed as U.S. solicitor general
Elizabeth Prelogar, a longtime attorney born and raised in the Boise area, was confirmed Thursday in a U.S. Senate vote as President Joe Biden’s pick for solicitor general, meaning she will represent the federal government in cases before the nation’s highest court.
Prelogar is just the second woman ever to achieve the position tasked with making the government’s arguments in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. She won confirmation in a 53-36 vote, with Idaho’s two Republican senators supporting her bid as the Justice Department’s fourth-highest ranked official.
“I am incredibly proud that the new solicitor general is a Boisean. Elizabeth Prelogar is distinctly qualified for the position, having served in the solicitor general’s office for years and already argued before the Supreme Court nine times,” Boise Mayor Lauren McLean said in a written statement to the Idaho Statesman. “Prelogar’s confirmation is not only timely, but also important to people like me who recognize the need for more women to serve our country throughout each branch of government.”
Prelogar, 41, takes over the Office of the Solicitor General at a particularly momentous and politically volatile time, as the Supreme Court takes up several potentially precedent-setting appeals. In just the next week, they include cases concerning the contentious issues of gun rights and abortion, after Texas passed a law this summer banning the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy.
Born Elizabeth Barchas at St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center, she graduated from Boise High School in 1998 before heading to Emory University in Atlanta. She also served as Miss Idaho USA in 2001 and Miss Idaho America in 2004, and still makes frequent visits to her home state.
It was even before that then, however, at just 12 years old, that the young Idahoan attained her status as an academic phenom. While still in middle school, Prelogar was already taking courses at Boise State University, her mother Jeanne Barchas previously told the Statesman.
“Lizzi,” as she was known to friends, also worked as a member of the Idaho Statesman’s Teen Panel, a group of area high school students who wrote columns and articles for the newspaper from 1996 to 1998. She was editor of the Boise High School newspaper at the time.
Prelogar’s mother told the Statesman that before becoming an attorney, her daughter considered a career in journalism. Prelogar wrote for Emory’s student newspaper and spent two summers working for the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman and The Boston Globe, she said.
After college, Prelogar went on to earn a master’s degree from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and then her law degree at Harvard University. But Prelogar already came from a legal pedigree, with her father, Rudolf “Rudy” Barchas, first to lead the Idaho Attorney General’s Office Consumer Protection Division.
Following law school, Prelogar became a law clerk for current U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland while he was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. After that, she clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and future Justice Elena Kagan, who in 2009 became the first woman to fill the role of solicitor general.
Prelogar, who lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two sons, went on to serve as special counsel for Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference into the U.S. election in 2016. She has previously argued cases before the Supreme Court, including two last year, and worked as acting solicitor general shortly after Biden took office in January. She stepped away from that role after the president formally nominated her in August, while the Senate vetted her for the position.
As the nation’s solicitor general, Prelogar is also charged with setting the Justice Department’s appellate priorities, and whether the federal government will take a position in cases. The department declined to state whether Prelogar will be present Monday in front the Supreme Court to represent the Biden administration in its case challenging Texas’s new abortion law, according to The Washington Post.
This story was originally published October 28, 2021 at 5:54 PM.
