John Payton, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., has made a number of contributions to civil rights throughout his career as a lawyer.
As U-M’s lead counsel in the Supreme Court case Gratz v. Bollinger, Payton defended the University’s use of race in the admissions process as a way to promote campus diversity. He also defended the city of Richmond’s minority set-aside program in Richmond v. Croson.
Payton returns Oct. 28 to Ann Arbor to deliver the sixth annual Nancy Cantor Distinguished Lecture on Intellectual Diversity, named in honor of former Provost Cantor, now chancellor of Syracuse University. He will speak on “Democracy and the Challenges of Diversity.”
The lecture, which begins 9 a.m. at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, is free and open to the public.
The Los Angeles native attended Pomona College and Harvard Law School before beginning his career as a civil rights attorney. Early activism was evident in his first year at Harvard, where he wrote briefs for a lawyer defending American Indian Movement activists charged with crimes related to an armed conflict at Wounded Knee, S.D.
Payton served as the Corporation Council for the District of Columbia from 1991-94, headed the firm’s litigation department from 1998-2000 and served as president of the District of Columbia Bar from 2001-02.
After this Payton headed the legal team that defended U-M in Gratz v. Bollinger — one of two cases heard in 2003 by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court ruled that while the University’s undergraduate admissions process at the time was flawed in the way it sought to assemble a diverse class, consideration of race to achieve diversity was legal.
Payton and is a member of the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates, the Council of the Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities and the Commission on Immigration Policy. He has taught at Georgetown Law Center, Harvard Law School and Howard University Law School.
