NEW YORK – Civil rights lawyer John Payton, who defended the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy before the Supreme Court and led the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, has died. He was 65.
Payton died Thursday at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore after a brief illness, said Lee Daniels, spokesman for the New York-based NAACP fund.
President Barack Obama said in a prepared statement that he and first lady Michelle Obama were saddened to learn that their “dear friend” had died.
He was a “true champion of equality,” Obama said. “The legal community has lost a legend, and, while we mourn John’s passing, we will never forget his courage and fierce opposition to discrimination in all its forms.”
After graduating from Pomona College in California, Payton went to Harvard Law School and joined the Washington firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr in 1978.
He argued affirmative action cases before the Supreme Court, including 2003’s Gratz v. Bollinger, which involved the admissions policies at the University of Michigan.
The court ruled 6-3 against the university in Gratz, but, in a companion case, Grutter v. Bollinger, the court ruled 5-4 that the law school’s race-conscious admissions policy did not amount to a quota system.
