Elizabeth Warren Claim To Be First Nursing Mother To Take NJ Bar Exam

While giving a speech at the Chicago Humanities Festival in 2011, Elizabeth Warren asserted that she was the first nursing mother to take the New Jersey Bar Exam, as reported at The Boston Herald (link now dead, reprinted at Legal Insurrection[1]) (emphasis added):

Warren, who had no public events yesterday, again refused an interview request from the Herald, responding to questions instead through a spokeswoman by email. Meanwhile, campaign officials scrambled to address another claim Warren’s made about her life’s story.

“I was the first nursing mother to take a bar exam in the state of New Jersey,” Warren told an audience at the Chicago Humanities Festival in 2011, in a video posted on the CHF website.

When asked how Warren knows that, her campaign said: “Elizabeth was making a point about the very serious challenges she faced as a working mom — from taking an all-day bar exam when she was still breast-feeding, to finding work as a lawyer that would accommodate a mom with two small children.”

Winnie Comfort of the New Jersey Judiciary, which administers that state’s bar exam, said there’s no way to verify Warren’s claim. Comfort said women have been taking the New Jersey bar exam since 1895, but she’s not aware their nursing habits were ever tracked.

At least one other person asserted that Warren’s claim was untrue:[2]

This morning three different law professors sent me this video of U.S. Senate Candidate and Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren claiming to be the first nursing mother to ever take the bar exam. One of the professors, who is a liberal academic, noted that she knows that claim to be untrue from personal experience.

Some have claimed that Warren only was joking, but a full review of the longer video segment indicates that Warren was not joking when she made the claim.

The Warren campaign offered the following explanation[3]:

When asked how Warren knows that, her campaign said: “Elizabeth was making a point about the very serious challenges she faced as a working mom — from taking an all-day bar exam when she was still breast-feeding, to finding work as a lawyer that would accommodate a mom with two small children.”

References

  1. ^ William A. Jacobson, Elizabeth Warren's biggest whopper of them allLegal Insurrection, May 30, 2012
  2. ^ Jonathan Turley, Elizabeth Warren Admits She Claimed Minority Status . . . Then Faces Criticism Over Claim That She Was The First Nursing Mother To Take BarJonathan Turley, May 31, 2012
  3. ^ Meredith Jessup, Another doozy: Elizabeth Warren makes another outrageous claimThe Blaze, May 31, 2012
Last Updated: October 29th, 2019