NOTEWORTHY DEATHS

— Guided NAACP victories at high court

John Payton, who as president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund guided it to several major victories before the Supreme Court, died Thursday in Baltimore. He was 65 and lived in Washington.

The cause had not yet been determined, said Lee Daniels, a spokesman for the fund.

In 2010, Payton was the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in Lewis v. City of Chicago, in which a group of blacks seeking to be firefighters contended that they had properly filed a charge of discrimination against the city.

Payton argued that the cutoff score on a written examination to define the pool of qualified applicants had a disparate effect on minority groups, a contention to which the city conceded. But the city had successfully argued in lower courts that the discrimination charge was filedafter a statute of limitations had passed. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the lower court ruling.

A year earlier, in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, a municipal district in Austin, Texas, challenged the validity of Section 5, a provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The clause requires government entities previously judged to have a history of discrimination to receive permission from the Justice Department before making substantive changes to the voting process in their districts. Payton assisted in the arguments leading to the Supreme Court’s 8-1 decision upholding Section 5.

In 2003, while he was in private practice, Payton was the lead counsel for the University of Michigan in defending the use of race as a factor in admissions for its law school.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the affirmative-action policy.

New Yorker cartoonist over 60 years

NEW YORK -

Al Ross, whose droll cartoons featuring married couples, bar habitues, anthropomorphic animals, philosophizing prisoners, art and publishing world denizens, anachronistic mythological figures and loyal Mets fans appeared in The New Yorker for more than 60 years, died Thursday in the Bronx. He was 100.

His death was confirmed by his son David Roth.

Ross, who was born Abraham Roth, was one of four cartooning brothers who began publishing in the 1930s in magazines such as Collier’s, Esquire and The Saturday Evening Post. Two were known as Irving Roir and Salo. The only brother who did not change his name professionally was Ben Roth.

Much of the brothers’ early work was battle-of-the-sexesoriented. One of Ross’ cartoons shows men at a strip club with their faces turned away from the performer to watch the even more shapely waitress.

He first appeared in The New Yorker in 1937, and over the years he mastered the wry, arched-eyebrow sensibility of the magazine’s cartoons, and its signature wit.

Ross was born Oct. 19, 1911. Most sources say he was born in Vienna, but his son David said he was born in Romania and lived in Vienna as a boy.

Ross was one of five children of Reuben Roth, a military man who served in the cavalry of the kaiser of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Fleeing the persecution of Jews, Reuben Roth emigrated to the United States after World War I, and the entire family followed, settling in what is now Spanish Harlem in the early 1920s.

Arkansas, Pages 17 on 03/25/2012

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