Date: 2012-04-16
Speaker: JACKSON LEE (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. I rise today to speak about justice in America. Thank you Congresswoman CHRISTENSEN. and my other CBC colleagues. I appreciate your leadership in convening this Special Order on Justice. Trayvon Martin. and our good friend John Payton of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. How ironic that in the span of a couple of months in a historic election year. we lose one of our precious youths to a senseless and irresponsible act of injustice. while at the same time. a man who in the tradition of the late. great Justice Thurgood Marshall. dedicated his life to paving the long. winding road of justice so that the Trayvon Martins of the world could live life. go to school. and travel Westward and Eastward. as they pleased. That did not happen in Trayvons case. and that is why I believe these issues of justice are of the utmost importance. It is necessary to figure out the best possible way for this Congress to be involved in addressing racial profiling and hate crimes. Before we begin I wish to offer my deepest condolences to the family of Trayvon Martin. I was pleased that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) have begun to investigate the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Trayvon. And as most of us are surely aware. there was finally an arrest in the case last week of the man with the gun. who shot the boy. which will get the wheels of justice to start turning. I hosted a rally in Trayvons honor in Houston. TX and just returned from another rally in Miami held several weeks ago. There were hundreds of men. women and children all asking for justice. "I am Trayvon Martin" and "We are all Trayvon Martin." This case has captured the nations and indeed the worlds attention. as many folks around the world ask whats going on in the United States. the nation which touts liberty and justice on its coins. dollars. and in our engagements with those in the international community. John Payton. the sixth DirectorCounsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. left us late last month. at the age of sixtyfive. But his legacy did not leave. John Payton was one of the most formidable advocates of his generation. and he litigated and argued some of the most important civil rights cases of his time. In a legal career that spanned private practice. government service. and public interest law. He led the litigation department of the venerable Wilmer. Cutler & Pickering law firm. served as corporation counsel for the District of Columbia. and until the very end. led the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. A true warrior for justice. John litigated case before the Supreme Court. such as. NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware. in which he won a decision in the U.S. Supreme Court overturning a monetary judgment against the organization under Mississippis secondary boycott law. City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co.. in which he ably. albeit unsuccessfully. defended a minority contracting municipal ordinance. and perhaps most notably. two cases in which he defended the University of Michigans pursuit of diversity in admissions. Gratz v. Bollinger. and Grutter v. Bollinger. Most recently. in 2010. John successfully argued and won Williams v. City of Chicago.an employment discrimination case against the citys fire department. Under his leadership LDF won five Supreme Court cases. including a successful defense of the recently extended Voting Rights Act. I had the privilege of knowing John Payton for many years. It is said that success has many parents. while failure is an orphan. There were many who were responsible for the 2003 landmark affirmative action cases that saved diversity in higher education. thereby keeping the doors open to selective colleges. universities. graduate and professional schools. John litigated both cases in the trial courts. in the court of appeals. and in the Supreme Court. He argued Gratz. and his work was essential to the victory in Grutter. Johns was a passionate voice for racial and social justice. But even in the toughest casesin which the odds were stacked against his side particularly in the current Supreme CourtJohns work and his voice were no less forceful. excellent. and passionate. When the Supreme Court struck down Richmond. Virginias minority contracting program in City of Richmond v. Croson by a narrow 54 vote. it was in spite of the Herculean effort put in by John Payton and his staff. It is important to recall that the U.S. Supreme Court has narrowly approved of congressionally mandated racial preferences to allocate the benefits of contracts on federally sponsored public works projects. while generally condemning similar actions taken by state and local entities to promote public contracting opportunities for minority entrepreneurs. which came about because of years and years of de facto and de jure discrimination. some of it documented. but certainly much of it not. Bad actors usually do not leave their scripts lying around. Disputes prior to City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson generated divergent views as to whether state affirmative action measures for the benefit of racial minorities were subject to the same "strict scrutiny" as applied to "invidious" racial discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause. an "intermediate" standard resembling the test for genderbased classifications. or simple rationality. In Croson. a 5 to 4 majority resolved that while "race- conscious" remedies could be legislated in response to proven past discrimination by the affected governmental entities. "racial balancing" untailored to "specific" and "identified" evidence of minority exclusion was impermissible. John had done the best that could be done. and a Supreme Court increasingly hostile to programs and efforts specifically designed to include African Americans and others who had been historically excluded from opportunity was on its way to becoming a forum in which they were unlikely to win. Yet John. in the aftermath of Croson. tirelessly traveled the Country. meeting with attorneys in the public and private sectors in an effort to properly craft contracting programs and to ameliorate the effects of the decision. John did not accept defeat. He simply went back to work.