Celebrated civil rights attorney John Payton, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, died late March 22 following a brief illness, the organization confirmed.
Payton’s career spanned more than three decades in private practice, where he was one of the first African-American partners at a major law firm in Washington, and public service. He was a renowned member of the U.S. Supreme Court bar as well as a fierce advocate of pro bono work.
Payton, 65, was a “true champion of equality,” President Barack Obama said in a statement. “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.”
Payton, who earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1977, began and spent most of his career in Washington, joining Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr in 1978. He spent nearly three decades at Wilmer, serving as head of the firm’s litigation practice.
As one of the first black partners at a major law firm in Washington, Payton “had a much larger, global view of the role of lawyers in American society, particularly the role of an African-American lawyer as a change agent,” said Covington & Burling partner Thomas Williamson Jr., a longtime friend.
Williamson said Payton wanted to leverage Wilmer’s resources to promote pro bono work and social action. “He was really an exemplar of somebody who was both conscious and imaginative about how you can use the resources of a large law firm to advance the interests of justice and to protect the most needy and vulnerable people in our society.”
Wilmer partner William Perlstein, a former firm co-managing partner, said Payton took an active interest in helping other attorneys at the firm. “The younger lawyers have been coming into my office all morning telling me how important he was to them getting interested in the law, in our firm, [and] in mentoring them through their careers,” he said.
In the courtroom, Perlstein said Payton’s skills as a “great storyteller” helped him sway juries and judges to his client’s side. “Part of his effectiveness as a trial lawyer and an appellate lawyer was his ability to be able to get to the heart of things,” he said.
A longtime member of the Supreme Court bar, Payton defended affirmative action policies in several landmark cases before the court, including 1989′s City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., a public contracts challenge, and 2003′s Gratz v. Bollinger, which involved the admissions policies at the University of Michigan.
“John Payton was a towering figure,” said Walter Dellinger of O’Melveny & Myers, the former acting solicitor general, in a statement. “He was just flat-out brilliant, and combined that intellectual power with a deep and empathetic commitment to justice….Every encounter with John was a learning experience.”
Payton “surely resides in the very first rank of civil rights lawyers of his generation,” said former Solicitor General Seth Waxman, now at Wilmer, in a statement. “John was also a unique lawyer: at once a focused, hard-nosed litigator, a mentor, and a genuinely compassionate human being.”
When asked in June about his decision to leave private practice for the LDF in 2008, Payton told The National Law Journal that it was a natural choice.
“I wanted to affect the issues of justice in society in my private practice, and the opportunity to do it with the legal defense fund was just one of those offers that you just can’t refuse,” he said. “Do I miss private practice? The answer is, no I do not, at all. This is a terific job, with terific issues, in a time that is extremely challenging.”
