Former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, a prominent conservative lawyer who served under two Republican presidents and famously argued for same-sex marriage, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 84. Olson’s death was announced by the law firm Gibson Dunn, where he had practiced since 1965. No cause of death was provided.
Olson was a central figure in numerous critical legal battles over the past several decades, including the landmark 2000 U.S. Supreme Court case that resolved the Florida presidential election recount in favor of George W. Bush. “Even in a town full of lawyers, Ted’s career as a litigator was particularly prolific,” remarked Mitch McConnell, the long-serving Senate Republican leader. “More importantly, I count myself among so many in Washington who knew Ted as a good and decent man.”
Bush appointed Olson as solicitor general, a role he held from 2001 to 2004. Prior to that, Olson had served as an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department during President Ronald Reagan’s first term in the early 1980s. Throughout his career, Olson argued 65 cases before the Supreme Court, according to Gibson Dunn.
“They weren’t just little cases,” said Theodore Boutrous, a partner at the firm who worked with Olson for 37 years. “Many of them were big, blockbuster cases that helped shape our society.” Among these were Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 case that removed numerous restrictions on political contributions, and a successful challenge to the Trump administration’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
“He’s the greatest lawyer I’ve ever worked with or seen in action,” stated Boutrous, who was so closely linked with Olson that they were known as “the two Teds” at Gibson Dunn. “He was an entertaining and forceful advocate who could go toe-to-toe with the Supreme Court justices in a way few lawyers could. They respected him so much.”
One of Olson’s most notable and contentious cases saw him siding against many conservatives. Following California’s adoption of a ban on same-sex marriage in 2008, Olson partnered with his former courtroom adversary David Boies, who had represented Democrat Al Gore in the presidential election case, to fight for California couples seeking the right to marry. During closing arguments, Olson asserted that tradition and fears about the impact on heterosexual unions were not legally sufficient grounds to deny same-sex couples the right to marry.
“It is the right of individuals, not an indulgence to be dispensed by the state,” Olson argued. “The right to marry, to choose to marry, has never been tied to procreation.” In 2010, a federal judge in California ruled that the state’s ban violated the U.S. Constitution, a decision upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013.
“This is the most important thing I’ve ever done, as an attorney or a person,” Olson later reflected in a documentary about the case. He told The Associated Press in 2014 that the marriage case was significant because it “involves tens of thousands of people in California, but really millions of people throughout the United States and beyond that to the world.” His involvement in the case added a powerful conservative voice to the shifting national sentiment on same-sex marriage.
David Boies remembered Olson as a stalwart in the legal community who “left the law, our country, and each of us better than he found us. Few people are a hero to those that know them well. Ted was a hero to those who knew him best.”
Olson’s personal life also bore a tragic connection to history when his third wife, Barbara Olson, a renowned conservative legal analyst, perished on September 11, 2001. She was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, which terrorists crashed into the Pentagon.
In recent years, Olson represented high-profile clients such as quarterback Tom Brady amid the 2016 “Deflategate” scandal and Apple in its legal battle with the FBI over accessing the phone of the 2015 San Bernardino shooter.
Reflecting on Olson’s exceptional career and stature, Barbara Becker, managing partner of Gibson Dunn, stated, “Ted was a titan of the legal profession and one of the most extraordinary and eloquent advocates of our time.”
