John Payton, the top civil rights lawyer dies, 65

NEW YORK (AP) — a civil rights Attorney John Payton, who defend the University of Michigan, and led to the policy of discrimination before the NAACP Legal Defense and educational Fund, has died. He was 65.

Lee Daniels, New York-based NAACP Fund spokesman said Payton died Thursday, the Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, a brief illness.

President Barack Obama said in a prepared statement, he and first lady Michelle Obama were saddened to learn that their "good friend" of the dead.

He was the "real" champion, "Obama said. "The legal community has lost a legend, and even though we mourn his passing, we will never forget John's courage and fierce opposition to all forms of discrimination."

After graduating from Pomona College, California, Payton went to Harvard Law School, and joined the staff of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in Washington of a firm of Auditors in 1978.

He argued that the discrimination cases before the Supreme Court, and in 2003, Bollinger, Gratz vs. the admission policies from the University of Michigan.

Of Justice 6-3 against the University of Gratz, but the companion case Grutter vs. Bollinger of Justice 5-4 that the law school's race to be aware of with a view to achieving greater policy equal to the quota system.

Barbara Arnwine, Executive Director of the Lawyers Committee on civil rights, said Payton, the Gratz and Grutter showed his strategic thinking in the cooperative.

"He really sat back and said," what is it, that the Court of Justice of the European communities should be familiar with the information about the racial diversity in America? "" Arnwine said. "What are the consequences of the information society, the rich?" "

Payton left private practice to become a corporation in the weaker when it came to the District of Columbia in the light of all the material. In 1994, he joined his wife, Gay Hudson in South Africa, where the country's first democratic elections, Hudson was a member of the Commission.

He returned to Wilmer Hale then became a Director and Chairman of the legal defense and Education Fund in 2008.

At the same time, in the year 2010, the Fund for the Payton claimed Lewis vs. City of Chicago, which, acting unanimously, the highest of the group, the African American's training had to race discrimination in a timely fashion, free of charge.

The national law journal named to the list of the most influential decade Payton lawyers in 2010.

Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil and human rights, said in a statement that Payton "was the Warrior, fairness and equality."

"He had some form of the 21st century, Thurgood Marshall," Henderson said. "The biggest compliment I could pay him for the advocate, is that he can perform the foxes and he can perform the Canes Venatici."

Survivors are his wife, also a significant civil rights attorney.

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