Elizabeth Prelogar

Elizabeth Barchas Prelogar (born 1980) is an American lawyer who has served as solicitor general of the United States since October 2021. She served as acting solicitor general from January 20, at the start of the Biden administration, until President Joe Biden sent her nomination to the U.S. Senate on August 11, 2021, when the terms of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 prevented her from serving while the nomination was before the Senate.

From 2014 to 2019, Prelogar was an assistant to the solicitor general. She was briefly detailed to the Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election. In 2020, she joined Cooley LLP as a partner. She was named principal deputy solicitor general by President Joe Biden in January 2021 and served as Acting Solicitor General. On August 10, 2021, President Biden nominated Prelogar to the office of Solicitor General. Her nomination was sent to the Senate that same day. Her nomination was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which approved it by a vote of 13–9.

On October 28, 2021, the Senate confirmed Prelogar as solicitor general by a vote of 53–36, making her the second woman to hold the position after Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. She was sworn into office later on that day.

After law school, Prelogar spent three years as a law clerk, first for judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2008 to 2009, then for U.S. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg from 2009 to 2010, and then for Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan from 2010 to 2011. She then entered private practice as an associate at Hogan Lovells. She taught a course at Harvard Law School on Supreme Court and appellate advocacy.

On May 31, 2008 she married Brandon Prelogar in Guatemala. They have two sons.

Prelogar was born and raised in Boise, Idaho. She graduated from Boise High School in 1998. After first taking college courses at Boise State University at the age of 12, she attended Emory University, where she double majored in English and Russian and was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship. She graduated summa cum laude in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts. She then earned a Master of Letters in creative writing with distinction from the University of St Andrews in 2003. She attended Harvard Law School, where she was an articles editor for the Harvard Law Review and was a finalist in the Ames Moot Court Competition. She graduated with a Juris Doctor magna cum laude in 2008.

Prelogar was Miss Idaho Teen USA in 1998, Miss Idaho USA in 2001, and Miss Idaho in 2004. Prelogar donated to the Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign and Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign. She also performed in a mock trial with Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson in 2016 prior to their respective nominations to the Supreme Court.