John Payton

Who was John Payton?

John A. Payton was a well-known African-American civil rights attorney. In 2008, Payton was appointed the sixth president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund serving in that post until his death. Prior to this, he was a Partner at the law firm WilmerHale for twenty years.

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 and in the court of appeals, and argued Gratz v. Bollinger before the Supreme Court of the United States.