Leahy, Mary L. C. (Mary Lee C.), 1940-

Born on Apr. 28, 1940 in Chicago Ill., and grew up in the Rogers Park neighborhood on north-side Chicago. This interview is a supplement to a series of interviews with Ms. Leahy in the spring of 2008, and focuses on Mary Lee's work on the Advisory Board for newly elected Governor Rod Blagojevich's transition team.

Born on Apr. 28, 1940 in Chicago Ill., and grew up in the Rogers Park neighborhood on north-side Chicago in a strong Irish-Catholic family. A very successful debater, she graduated from Loyola University in 1962, studied as a Fulbright scholar at Manchester University, England in 1963, and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1966, having married Andrew Leahy in 1964. She began her law career with a Chicago law practice, specializing in teacher tenure cases. In 1968 she participated in the defense of the landmark Pickering v. Board of Education Supreme Court case (arguing for a teacher's freedom of speech), helping win the case by a 9-0 decision, and also helped defend protesters at the Democratic Convention in Chicago that same year. In 1970 Leahy served as a delegate to the Illinois Constitutional Convention, and in 1972 she participated in the effort to unseat Mayor Daley's delegation to the Democratic Convention in Miami in favor of an opposing slate of delegate sponsored by Jesse Jackson and William Singer. In 1973 she was nominated to be Governor Dan Walker's Director of Illinois' Environmental Protection Agency. The legislature rejected her candidacy, but she was later appointed as director of Children and Family Services. Following Walker's defeat for reelection in 1976, Leahy began a private law practice in Springfield, where she continued to make a career representing state and union employees. Most notably, she represented several women (pro-bono) involved in the state's fight to pass the federal Equal Rights Amendment, and in 1990 she represented the plaintiffs in Rutan v. the Republican Party of Illinois (a political patronage case) before the U.S. Supreme Court, winning a 5-4 decision. She has also successfully represented veterans to protect their state employment rights. She is still practicing law at the time of this interview.