Edward DuMont

About Edward

Edward DuMont served as Solicitor General of California from January 2014 to August 2019, overseeing both civil and criminal appeals for the state Department of Justice. Appointed by then-state Attorney General Kamala Harris to lead a significant restructuring of the Solicitor General function, Ed helped build a dedicated office of 10-15 lawyers who work collaboratively with other lawyers from across the Department, particularly on cases in the state and federal Supreme Courts and selected matters in the Ninth Circuit. Evolution of the office continued under Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Over the course of his career, Ed has argued 20 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. As state Solicitor General, he personally argued before that Court in  Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association , addressing the constitutionality of “agency fees” for public-sector labor unions, and  Riley v. California , involving cell-phone searches incident to arrests; before the California Supreme Court in  Gillette v. California Franchise Tax Board , involving state taxation of multistate businesses; and before an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit in  Peruta v. County of San Diego , involving the Second Amendment and California’s system for issuing concealed-carry permits. He closely supervised briefing and argument in numerous other significant appeals, and was a member of the Department’s senior leadership team. From 2001-2013 Ed was in private practice in Washington, DC, where he helped lead the Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation group at WilmerHale. Between 1992 and 2001 he served as an Assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice, and on detail as an acting Associate Deputy Attorney General. From 1989-1992 he practiced tax and corporate law with Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City. Ed received his BA from Yale in 1983 and his JD from Stanford in 1986. After law school he clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and spent a year as a Luce Scholar with a law firm in Bangkok, Thailand.