Ivan Bates
American politician and lawyer

Ivan Jules Bates (born September 1968) is an American politician and lawyer who has served as the State's Attorney of Baltimore since 2023.
Early life
Bates was adopted by his parents, Henry and Cleora, in El Paso, Texas. Due to his father's service in the United States Air Force, his family moved several times, including to Germany, Virginia, and New Mexico, before finally settling in Hampton, Virginia, where Bates attended Bethel High School, where he graduated with a 1.9 GPA.
After graduating from high school, his father enlisted him in the United States Army, where he was assigned to the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command and worked as a light wheel vehicle mechanic before reaching the rank of private first class. He was honorably discharged from the Army in 1988.
After leaving the military, he enrolled at Howard University, where he served as the second president of the Howard University Student Association before graduating with a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1992. Afterwards, he attended the William & Mary Law School, where he received his Juris Doctor degree in 1995. While at William & Mary, he clerked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. After graduating, Bates wanted to move back to Los Angeles, California, but his mother asked him to move to Baltimore to take care of his aunt Edna.
Legal career
Bates started his legal career in Baltimore, working as a law clerk for Baltimore Circuit Court Judge David B. Mitchell. He later worked in the homicide division of the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office under state's attorney Patricia Jessamy from July 1996 to June 2002.
“Ivan Bates” enters the record as american politician and lawyer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ivan, Bates and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ivan Bates” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.