NEW YORK - civil rights Attorney John Payton, who defends policy of the University of Michigan affirmative action before the Supreme Court and led the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, has died. He was 65.
Payton is died Thursday in hospital of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, after a brief illness, said Lee Daniels, spokesman for the NAACP Fund based in New York.
In a prepared statement, President Barack Obama stated that he and first lady Michelle Obama are saddened to learn that their "dear friend" was dead.
It was a "true champion of equality", said Obama. "The legal community has lost a legend, and while we mourn passing of John, we will never forget his courage and his fierce opposition to discrimination in all its forms."
After graduating from Pomona College in California, Payton went to Harvard Law School and joined the Cabinet of Washington of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr in 1978.
He argued the affirmative action case before the Supreme Court, including Graz vs. Bollinger of 2003, which dealt with the admissions policy at the University of Michigan.
The Court ruled 6 - 3 against the University of Graz, but in a related case, Grutter vs. Bollinger, the Court ruled 5-4 that the Faculty of law, race-conscious admissions policy did not amount to a system of quotas.
Barbara Arnwine, Executive Director of the Committee of counsel for civil rights, said work of Payton Gratz and Grutter shows his strategic thinking long term.
"He was really sitting on the back and said,"That is what the Court must include the subject of racial diversity in America?"" "Arnwine said. "What are the consequences of a non-diverse society?'". ?
Practical left Payton private in the 1990s to become the Corporation counsel for the District of Columbia. In 1994, he joined his wife, Gay McDougall, in South Africa, where the McDougall was a member of the commission, the first democratic elections of the country running.
He returned to Wilmer Hale, then became educational Director-counsel and President of the Fund in 2008 and legal defence.
While the Fund in 2010, Payton argued Lewis vs city of Chicago, in which the Supreme Court held unanimously that a group of firefighters aspiring African-American had filed a charge in a timely manner of any racial discrimination.
The National Law Journal named Payton in his list of most influential lawyers of the Decade in 2010.
"" Wade Henderson, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference, on civilians and human rights said in a statement that Payton "was a fighter for justice and equality."
"It was probably a 21st century Thurgood Marshall," said Henderson. "The most compliment I could pay him as an advocate is that it could run with the foxes, and it could run with the dogs."
Survivors include his wife, also a notable civil rights attorney.
-Copyright 2012, Associated Press
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