WASHINGTON- Theodore B. Olson, the conservative lawyer who helped win the right to same-sex marriage in California, died Wednesday at age 84.
Olson was a kind and good-spirited advocate who won landmark conservative rulings from the Supreme Court.
They included the Bush v. Gore that made George W. Bush president, and the Citizens United ruling that overturned bans on campaign spending.
Four years ago, he represented so-called Dreamers in a Supreme Court immigration case and won a 5-4 ruling that prevented the first Trump administration from repealing protections for young immigrants who came to this country with their parents.
Olson surprised many when she agreed to lead the challenge to California's Proposition 8 and its ban on same-sex marriage.
“I wanted to convey the message that this was not Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, that this is about human rights and human decency,” he said in an interview with The Times.
Olson filed a lawsuit on behalf of two gay couples, and Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that it was unconstitutional discrimination to deny them the right to marry.
Proponents of the proposal appealed, but the Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that they did not represent the state and did not have standing.
While the decision was procedural, it paved the way for same-sex couples to marry in California. Two years later, the court ruled that the Constitution protected gay marriages nationwide.
He said that at that time he lost some conservative friends who were no longer willing to join him for lunch or dinner at his house.
The case “changed my life a lot. When I talk about it, I get very emotional,” Olson said.
Last week, California voters formally removed Proposition 8 from the state Constitution and enshrined the right to marry.
Olson was born in Chicago in 1940 and grew up in Mountain View, California.
He was a law student at UC Berkeley in 1964, where he said he was one of the only students to support Republican Barry Goldwater in his losing race for the presidency.
In 1980, Olson was a lawyer at Gibson Dunn in Los Angeles when Ronald Reagan was elected president.
Reagan chose William French Smith, a partner at Gibson Dunn, as attorney general of the United States. Smith then tapped Olson to lead the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
Olson would later represent Reagan as his personal attorney after he left the White House.
In 1984, he left the administration and helped establish Gibson Dunn's Washington office.
For the next 40 years he worked there, except for a four-year stint as U.S. attorney general representing the Bush administration.
He argued 60 cases before the Supreme Court as a private attorney and government attorney.
“Ted has been the heart and soul of Gibson Dunn for six decades and made us who we are today,” said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a partner at Gibson Dunn in Los Angeles who regularly collaborated with Olson on major cases. “He was not only an incomparable lawyer, mentor, role model and friend, but he made immeasurable contributions to the rule of law, our Constitution and our country. We will miss him with all our hearts.”
The Bush v. Gore case unfolded over five days in early December 2000. Olson filed an emergency appeal seeking to stop the counting of untabulated paper votes in Florida. He said that because there were no agreed-upon standards for deciding when a defective ballot could be counted, the outcome would differ county by county.
At noon on a Saturday, the court accepted his appeal by a vote of 5 to 4 and agreed to hold a hearing on Monday. Late Tuesday afternoon, the court ended the Florida recount in an unsigned opinion with four dissenters.
Upon taking office, Bush chose Olson to represent his administration before the court.
Olson was in his Justice Department office in the early morning hours of September 11, 2001, when he received a call from his wife, Barbara. He had boarded an American Airlines flight bound for Los Angeles that was hijacked. A few minutes later, the call was disconnected. The plane crashed into the Pentagon, killing everyone on board.
He said he considered himself lucky to have a busy legal career and many friends who helped him through the pain.
He later remarried and his wife, Lady Booth Olson, was a Democrat and more liberal. She said the gay marriage case had changed him.
“When you look at the discrimination face to face, these people who stood up and testified for hours about what it's like to be denied the right to marry, it's transformative,” he said in a 2013 interview with The Times. “I think he's starting to open his mind and listen a little more than he used to.”
