Long-time solicitor general leaving for private sector job
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Indiana’s first and long-time solicitor general, Thomas M. Fisher, is leaving the Office of the Attorney General to take a job in the private sector, Attorney General Todd Rokita announced Wednesday.
Fisher is stepping down next month to join EdChoice, a nonpartisan group that advocates for school choice.
“I am a lawyer who believes in a calling,” Fisher said in a news release. “And after two decades in the Office of Attorney General, I have been called to advance the cause of liberty on a new front.”
Admitted to the Indiana bar in 1994, Fisher joined the AG’s office as a deputy attorney general in 2001. He was named the state’s first solicitor general in 2005, a role in which he oversaw litigation involving constitutional challenges and “other issues of vital interest to the state government.”
As solicitor general, Fisher has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court five times and before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Indiana Supreme Court dozens of times. His work has also included writing amicus briefs on issues such as climate change, abortion, the Ten Commandments and the right to trial by jury, among others.
“The people of Indiana received an incalculable level of value from Tom’s service,” Rokita said in a statement. “He is a highly skilled and talented lawyer who could have made millions of dollars with his God-given talents over the last 20 years. Instead, he put those talents to good use for the people of Indiana, and as Hoosiers we couldn’t be more grateful.”
In addition to Rokita, Fisher worked under former attorneys general Steve Carter, Greg Zoeller and Curtis Hill.
In the news release, he called his work as solicitor general “the professional honor of a lifetime.” He cited Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, a voter ID case, Meredith v. Daniels, a school choice scholarship case, and Planned Parenthood v. Members of the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana, the case involving Indiana’s new abortion ban, as the three most memorable cases he has argued.
His professional achievements include twice receiving the National Association of Attorneys General Best Brief Award for excellence in U.S. Supreme Court brief writing, being named a fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers and receiving the Senior Peck Medal from his undergraduate alma mater, Wabash College.
At EdChoice, Fisher will be part of the expansion of the organization’s legal affairs work, according to President and CEO Robert C. Enlow.
“With so many new programs and efforts around the country, there is more need than ever to provide legal services to the school choice movement,” Enlow said in the news release.
Rokita said he is conducting a nationwide search for Fisher’s successor.