From NYT:
John Payton, who as president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund guided it to several major victories before the Supreme Court, died on Thursday in Baltimore. He was 65 and lived in Washington.
The cause had not yet been determined, said Lee Daniels, a spokesman for the fund.
Named president in 2008, Mr. Payton was the defense fund’s sixth leader since it became a separate entity from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1940. He had been active in the civil rights movement since his days at Pomona College in the 1960s.
…
In 2003, while he was in private practice, Mr. Payton was the lead counsel for the University of Michigan in defending the use of race as a factor in admissions for its law school.
A critical point of contention in the case, Grutter v. Bollinger, was whether a diverse student body was of compelling interest to the state. “In order to achieve this broad diversity, we must take race and ethnicity into account,” Mr. Payton argued. In a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the affirmative-action policy.
Note: Grutter v. Bollinger is now vulnerable to reversal given the court’s current composition and the affirmative action case pending before it. See: The Further “Whitening” of Higher Education??? Supremes to Hear Affirmative Action Case
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