Emilie Norma Wanderer

Emilie N. Wanderer was a pioneering Nevada attorney and a lifelong advocate for social justice, remembered as one of the first women licensed to practice law in the state. Born April 8, 1902, in Providence, Rhode Island, she grew up in Boston, attended Boston University, and studied law at Fordham Law School in New York City. Though she left law school early for lack of funds, she passed the New York bar exam in 1933. While working for the U.S. Attorney's office in New York City, she helped create the National Women's Bar Association and was appointed by the governor to the Commission for the Improvements of the Courts of New York.

In 1946, Ms. Wanderer moved with her children to the Las Vegas area. After initially working as a legal assistant, she passed the Nevada bar exam in 1947 and opened her own practice in downtown Las Vegas - believed to be the first woman to practice law in the city, and recognized by the State Bar of Nevada as among the first 25 women licensed in the state. In the early 1950s she took on the NAACP as a client at a time when Strip hotels barred Black guests, hosting meetings in her home and facing threats from hate groups for doing so. A dedicated defense attorney, she believed everyone was entitled to a credible defense, and she often took on the causes of the poor through pro bono work.

Ms. Wanderer helped lay the groundwork to establish Clark County's Family Court, and in April 1972 she became the first woman in Nevada to run in a District Court judicial race. In 1974 she entered practice with her son John Wanderer in the firm of Wanderer & Wanderer, retiring as a full-time lawyer in 1981. In 1999 she established the Emilie Wanderer scholarship at UNLV's Boyd School of Law with a gift of $450,000, and the ACLU of Nevada named its annual Emilie Wanderer Civil Libertarian of the Year Award in her honor, making her its first recipient. The oldest living member of the Nevada Bar Association at the time of her death, she died March 3, 2005, at the age of 102.