by Nicole Flatow
The country lost a civil rights giant, with the passing of president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, John A. Payton. He died suddenly on Thursday at Johns Hopkins University Hospital after a brief illness, The Root reports.
Payton led LDF in several major Supreme Court victories, including Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District v. Holder, which rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of a core provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Lewis v. City of Chicago, a major employment discrimination victory, according to a statement from LDF.
The statement adds:
Widely considered one of the country's most skilled members of the Supreme Court bar, John Payton's enduring legacy will be his commitment to a principle articulated by LDF's founder, Charles Hamilton Houston. "What I am more concerned about," Houston said, "is that the Negro shall not be content simply with demanding an equal share in the existing system. It seems to me that his historical challenge is to make sure that the system [that] shall survive in the United States of America shall be a system which guarantees justice and freedom for everyone."
LDF's work will go on, in just the way that John would have wanted.
President Obama said today in a statement:
Michelle and I were saddened to hear about the passing of our dear friend John Payton. As president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, John led the organization's involvement in five Supreme Court cases.
A true champion of equality, he helped protect civil rights in the classroom and at the ballot box. 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 was a voice for the civil rights community, and a leading constitutional thinker. During a 2009 American Constitution Society event at the National Press Club on “The Road from Lincoln to Obama,” Payton discussed the importance of shedding our racist history as we move forward with our constitutional jurisprudence.
“I would say Reconstruction didn’t fail. It was destroyed,” he said.
He continued:
ust first be lodged with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in a specified timeframe. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia maintained that the plaintiffs claim was properly filed under the Civil Rights Act. "Title VII does not define ‘employment practice,' but we think it clear that the term encompasses the conduct of which petitioners complain: the exclusion of passing applicants who scored below 89 (until the supply of scores 89 or above was exhausted) when selecting those who would advance. Although the City had adopted the eligibility list (embodying the score cutoffs) earlier and announced its intention to draw from that list, it made use of the practice of excluding those who scored 88 or below each time it filled a new class of firefighters. Petitioners alleged that this exclusion caused a disparate impact. Whether they adequately proved that is not before us. What matters is that their allegations, based on the City's actual implementation of its policy, stated a cognizable claim."
, the justices will consider whether a group of African-American applicants to be firefighters properly brought a discrimination claim against Chicago officials. The group of potential firefighters argued that Chicago officials employed a test in a way that negatively impacted black applicants. A lower federal court agreed that the city's use of the test did discriminate against black applicants, but that decision was later overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The Seventh Circuit concluded that the plaintiffs had not lodged their complaint under federal law in a timely manner. The New York Times, in an