John Payton

For other people named John Peyton, see John Peyton (disambiguation).

John A. Payton (born December 27, 1946) is a prominent African American civil rights attorney. He was an attorney with Wilmer Hale for twenty years. In 2008, Payton was appointed the sixth president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Education

Payton grew up in Los Angeles, Ca where he graduated from high school. He attended Pomona College in [Claremont, Ca]] where he became heavily involved in 1960s civil rights and anti-war protests. Payton was one of the founders of Pomona's Black Student Association and helped to establish the Claremont Colleges' black admissions office.

For three years after his graduation, Payton served as an admissions officer in the position he helped to create. He left the position after receiving a scholarship which allowed him to study literature in West Africa for a year. While abroad, he applied to law school and was ultimately accepted to Harvard Law School.

While at Harvard Law, Payton worked on several prominent civil rights lawsuits. He was a member of the editorial board for the Harvard Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review.

Early Career

Following law school, he spent a year clerking for then-U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California judge Cecil Poole. He then traveled to Washington, D.C. where he was recruited to Wilmer Hale by James Robertson. While at the firm, Payton worked on several prominent civil rights cases - successfully defending the NAACP in a case in Mississippi. In City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., Payton unsuccessfully defended the city's set-aside affirmative action plan established to assist minority businesses in receiving city construction contracts. The case went up to the Supreme Court of the United States where the Court narrowly ruled against the city and determined, for the first time, that all government uses of race - including affirmative action programs - would be subject to strict scrutiny.

D.C. Corporation Counsel and Failed Clinton Appointment

When Sharon Pratt Dixon was elected mayor of Washington, D.C. in 1991, Vernon Jordan tapped Payton to become the district's corporation counsel. As corporation counsel, he reorganized, centralized and streamlined the corporation counsel offices. Early in his term he dealt with the fallout from the Mount Pleasant riots and helped to work to improve Latino and police relations in the city. He also participated in balancing the city's budget in the face of a major crisis.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated Payton to head the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. However, following vocal objections from the Congressional Black Caucus and despite some prominent African American support for Payton, Payton withdrew his name for consideration on December 17.

He left the D.C. Corporation Counsel office in 1994 to join his wife, Gay McDougall, in South Africa. Ms. McDougall was in South Africa working as a member of the Independent Electoral Commission, which ran South Africa's first democratic elections that year - leading to Nelson Mandela's election as president. At the same time, Payton served on an international observer team that included lawyers from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The couple remained in South Africa for several months before going back to D.C.

Back in Private Practice and the Michigan Cases

Returning to Wilmer Hale, Payton's civil practice involved representing corporations in employment matters, the American Legacy Foundation in its efforts to prevent youths from smoking, and Fannie Mae in a major class action challenge.

While still at the firm, Payton was tapped to be the lead counsel for the University of Michigan in defending its law and undergraduate schools' use of race in their admissions processes. For more than six years, Payton handled the two high-profile cases in the trial court, in the court of appeals and argued Gratz v. Bollinger before the Supreme Court. He organized a broad coalition from higher education, the military and top businesses in support of diversity initiatives. In another narrow decision, Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court upheld the use of race in college admissions.

Payton served as president of the District of Columbia Bar for one year in 2001. He has also recently served as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, the Georgetown University Law Center and Howard University Law School. He has been repeatedly recognized by his peers and news outlets as one of the nation's top lawyers.

Director Counsel of LDF

In 2008, Payton was appointed the sixth director-counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. He is following in the footsteps of such prominent civil rights attorneys as Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg.