Biden’s top Supreme Court lawyer granted ethics waiver to argue for race-based college admissions
- January 14, 2022
Margaret Peppiatt, The College Fix
The Department of Justice has granted U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar an ethics waiver, permitting the former Harvard professor to support race-based admissions in a Supreme Court case involving Harvard University.
Prelogar, who taught at Harvard Law School in the fall of 2020, was nominated for Solicitor General in August 2021 and confirmed by the Senate that October. Under the Biden Ethics Pledge, Prelogar was prohibited from working on a court case relating to her former employer until two years after her appointment.
But the ethics waiver releases her to argue the case before the Supreme Court.
Protect the People’s Trust, an ethics watchdog organization, recently obtained a copy of an ethics waiver granted to Prelogar by the DOJ in November 2021. The form released Prelogar from the two-year requirement for the case Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
“The timeline is very curious, especially with such a clear potential conflict of interest that required not just one, but at least two waivers, only one of which is currently publicly available,” said Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the People’s Trust, in a recent email to The College Fix.