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Noted
Civil Rights Attorney John Payton Named to Pomona
College Board of Trustees
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Noted civil rights attorney John Payton, who served as lead
counsel for the University of Michigan in two recent
landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases concerning diversity in
higher education, was elected to the Pomona College Board of
Trustees in September.
 A native of Los Angeles, Payton graduated from Pomona
College in 1973 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in
mathematics. As a student, he was a founder of the Black
Student Union and co-founder of the Black Studies Center. In
addition, he was a member of the Nu Alpha Phi fraternity and
participated in intramural sports. A Pomona College Scholar,
he was a recipient of the prestigious Watson Fellowship for
study in West Africa.
Following his graduation from Pomona, Payton earned his law
degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School and clerked for
U.S. District Judge Cecil F. Poole, Northern District of
California.
A partner with the firm Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering in
Washington, D.C., he came to the University of Michigan
lawsuits with a history of work on other civil rights cases,
including leadership roles in the National Lawyers Committee
for Civil Rights Under Law, the Washington Lawyers Committee
for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, the Southern Africa
Legal Support and Legal Education Project, and the Free
South Africa movement, for which he served as chief counsel.
He is also a past president of the District of Columbia Bar
Association, and widely considered to be one of the nation's
leading civil rights attorneys.
In one of the University of Michigan cases decided in the
summer of 2003, the Supreme Court rejected the university's
undergraduate admissions policy, in which race was
considered according to a formulaic point system. In the
second case, the court upheld the more individualized
race-conscious admissions policy of the university's law
school, affirming that race can be considered as one of many
factors in admissions. Payton led the argument on behalf of
the university in both cases.
“The Michigan cases have provoked a hard look at our
society, particularly how racially diverse we are and yet
how racially divided we remain,” Payton said recently. “The
University of Michigan cases focused on how important it is
for institutions of higher education to confront these
realities, but they also pointed out how much remains to be
done with respect to race in our society.”
Payton, who came of age in the 1960s, says that many members
of his generation share a common attitude: “It’s that we
didn’t go to college thinking just about the jobs we were
going to have when we got out. For many of us, it was a time
of activism; we thought we could make the world better, and
a lot of us wanted to make sure that that’s what we did with
our careers. It’s been enormously rewarding to me to have
been in a place where I have had a chance to help do those
things.”
A resident of Washington, DC, Payton is married to Gay
McDougall, who is the executive director of Global Rights:
Partners for Justice, formerly the International Human
Rights Law Group.
Pomona College, located in Claremont, CA, is one of the
nation’s premier liberal arts colleges. Its hallmarks
include small classes, close relationships between students
and faculty, and a range of student research and involvement
opportunities. For more information on Pomona College, visit
www.pomona.edu. |
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