The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (NAACP LDF, the Legal Defense Fund, or LDF) is an American civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City.
LDF is wholly independent and separate from the NAACP. Although LDF can trace its origins to the legal department of the NAACP created by Charles Hamilton Houston in the 1930s, Thurgood Marshall founded LDF as a separate legal entity in 1940, which became totally independent from the NAACP in 1957.
While primarily focused on the civil rights of African Americans in the U.S., LDF states it has "been instrumental in the formation of similar organizations that have replicated its organizational model in order to promote equality for Asian-Americans, Latinos, and women in the United States." LDF has also been involved in "the campaign for human rights throughout the world, including in South Africa, Canada, Brazil, and elsewhere."
LDF's national office is in Manhattan, with regional offices in Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, G.A. LDF has over 70 staff attorneys and hundreds of cooperating attorneys across the nation.
The board of directors of the NAACP created the Legal Defense Fund in 1940 specifically for tax purposes. In 1957, LDF was completely separated from the NAACP and given its own independent board and staff. Although LDF was originally meant to operate in accordance with NAACP policy, after 1961, serious disputes emerged between the two organizations. These disputes ultimately led the NAACP to create its own internal legal department while LDF continued to operate and score significant legal victories as an independent organization.
At times, this separation has created considerable confusion in the eyes and minds of the public. In the 1980s, the NAACP unsuccessfully sued LDF for trademark infringement. In its ruling rejecting the NAACP's lawsuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recognized that the "universal esteem in which the [NAACP] initials are held is due in significant measure to [LDF's] distinguished record as a civil rights litigator" and that the NAACP has "benefitted from the added luster given to the NAACP initials by the LDF's litigation successes."
1938: Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, invalidated state laws that denied African-American students access to all-white state graduate schools when no separate state graduate schools were available for African Americans. (Handled by Thurgood Marshall for the NAACP before the formal foundation of LDF.)
1940s
1940: Abbington v Board of Education of Louisville (KY), a suit argued by Thurgood Marshall and dropped though the settlement led to the removal of a 15 percent salary discrepancy between black and white teachers in the Louisville, Kentucky public schools (see NAACP in Kentucky).
1940: Chambers v. Florida, overturned the convictions—based on coerced confessions—of four young black defendants accused of murdering an elderly white man.
1944: Smith v. Allwright, a voting rights case in which the Supreme Court required Texas to allow African Americans to vote in primary elections, formerly restricted to whites.
1948: Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla., reaffirmed and extended Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, ruling that Oklahoma could not bar an African-American student from its all-white law school on the ground that she had not requested the state to provide a separate law school for black students.
1950s
1950: McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, ruled against practices of segregation within a formerly all-white graduate school insofar as they interfered with meaningful classroom instruction and interaction with other students.
1950: Sweatt v. Painter, ruled against a Texas attempt to circumvent Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada with a hastily established inferior law school for black students.
1953: Barrows v. Jackson, reaffirmed Shelley v. Kraemer, preventing state courts from enforcing restrictive covenants.
1954: Brown v. Board of Education, explicitly outlawed de jure racial segregation of public education facilities.
1965: Williams v. Wallace, made court order to allow a voting-rights march in Alabama, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which had previously been stopped twice by state police.
1967: Quarles v. Philip Morris, overturned the practice of "departmental seniority", which had forced non-white workers to give up their seniority rights when they transferred to better jobs in previously white-only departments.
1969: Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, ruled that 33 Mississippi school districts must desegregate "at once" thereby ending the era of foot-dragging in school desegregation permitted under the "all deliberate speed" doctrine of Brown v. Board of Education
1971: Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upheld intra-district busing to desegregate public schools. However, this issue was contested in the courts for three more decades. In the most recent as of 2004[update] related cases, the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2002 refused to review Cappachione v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education and Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, in which lower courts had ruled in favor of the school district.
1971: Haines v. Kerner, upheld the right of prisoners to challenge prison conditions in federal court.
1971: Groppi v. Wisconsin, upheld the right of a criminal defendant in a misdemeanor case to a venue where jurors are not biased against him.
1971: Clay v. United States, struck down Muhammad Ali's conviction for refusing to report for military service.
1971: Griggs v. Duke Power Company, ruled that tests for employment or promotion that produce different outcomes for blacks and whites are prima facie to be presumed discriminatory, and must measure aptitude for the job in question or they cannot be used.
1971: Phillips v. Martin Marietta, ruled that employers may not refuse to hire women with pre-school-aged children unless the same standards are applied to men.
1972: Furman v. Georgia, ruled that the death penalty as then applied in 37 states violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment because there were inadequate standards to guide judges and juries making the decision which defendants will receive a sentence of death. However, under revised laws, U.S. executions resumed in 1977.
1972: Hawkins v. Town of Shaw, banned discrimination in the provision of municipal facilities.
1973: Norwood v. Harrison banned government provision of school books to segregated private schools established to allow whites to avoid public school desegregation.
1973: Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, addressed deliberate de facto school segregation, ruling that where deliberate segregation was shown to have affected a substantial part of a school system, the entire district must ordinarily be desegregated.
1973: Adams v. Richardson, required federal education officials to enforce Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires that state universities, public schools, and other institutions that receive federal money may not discriminate by race.
1973: Ham v. South Carolina, ruled that defendants are entitled to have potential jurors interrogated about whether they harbor racial prejudices.
1973: McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, ruled that courts should hear cases of alleged unlawful discrimination based on the "minimal showing" that a qualified non-white applied unsuccessfully for a job that either remained open or was filled by a white person.
1980: Luévano v. Campbell, struck down Federal government use of a written test for hiring into nearly 200 entry-level positions because the test disproportionately disqualified African Americans and Latinos.
1984: Gingles v. Edmisten, continued as Thornburg v. Gingles (1986), the Supreme Court ruled that at-large countywide election of state legislators illegally discriminated against black voters, and the Court established the standard for identifying "vote dilution" under the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act.
1986: Dillard v. Crenshaw County Commission: a district court ordered over 180 of the local government bodies in counties, cities, and school boards in Alabama to change their methods of election because intentionally racially discriminatory state laws had made it extremely difficult for Black voters to elect their preferred candidates to local office.
1987: McClesky v. Kemp: in a 5–4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Georgia's death penalty and held that statistical evidence showing pervasive racial bias in the administration of the death penalty was not sufficient to invalidate a death sentence.
1988: Jiggets v. Housing Authority of City of Elizabeth: a district court ordered the HUD to spend $4 million to upgrade predominantly black, as well as predominantly white, housing projects in the city, and to implement federal maintenance, tenant selection and other procedures equitably.
1989: Cook v. Ochsner: in a belated coda to Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, a district court approved a settlement ending a New Orleans hospital's discrimination in emergency room treatment and patient admissions. The settlement also provided increased opportunities for African-American physicians to practice at the hospital.
1990s
1990: Missouri v. Jenkins, established that a federal court could order local tax increases to fund magnet schools as a part of a school desegregation order.
1993: Haynes v. Shoney's: A record court-approved settlement in an employment discrimination case. Shoney's Restaurants agreed to pay African-American employees, applicants, and white managers who resisted the practices, $105 million and to implement aggressive equal employment opportunity measures.
1995: McKennon v. Nashville Banner: The Supreme Court refused to allow employers to defeat otherwise valid claims of job discrimination by relying on facts they did not know until after the discriminatory decision had been made.
1996: Sheff v. O'Neill: The Supreme Court of Connecticut, in view of the disparities between Hartford public schools and schools in the surrounding suburbs, found the state liable for maintaining racial and ethnic isolation, and ordered the legislative and executive branches to propose a remedy.
1997: Robinson v. Shell Oil Company, determined that a former employee may sue his ex-employer for retaliating against him (by giving a bad job reference) after he filed discrimination charges over his termination.
2000: Rideau v. Whitley, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit threw out the 28-year-old, third conviction of Wilbert Rideau for murder because of discrimination in the composition of the Grand Jury that originally indicted him more than 40 years earlier. (Rideau was retried, convicted on the lesser charge of manslaughter, and released in 2005.)
2000: Smith v. United States, was resolved when President Clintoncommuted the sentence of Kemba Smith. Smith was a young African-American mother whose abusive, domineering boyfriend led her to play a peripheral role (she did not sell drugs but was aware of the selling) in a conspiracy to obtain and distribute crack cocaine. She had been sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 24+1⁄2 years in prison even though she was a first-time offender.
2000: Cromartie v. Hunt and Daly v. Hunt, ruled that it is legal to create, for partisan political reasons, a district with a high concentration of minority voters; hence the North Carolina district from which Mel Watt was elected to the House of Representatives was ruled not to be an illegal gerrymander.
2003: Gratz v. Bollinger, ordered the University of Michigan to change admission policies by removing racial quotas in the form of "points", but allowed them to continue to utilize race as a factor in admissions, to admit a diverse entering class of students.
2009: Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, the Supreme Court ruled the Voting Rights Act Section 5 preclearance process constitutional. LDF presented oral argument at the Supreme Court on behalf of a group of African-American voters.
2010s
2010: Lewis v. City of Chicago, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the City of Chicago can be held accountable for each and every time it used a hiring practice that arbitrarily blocked qualified minority applicants from employment. LDF presented oral argument in this case in the Supreme Court.
2013: Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act, ending the Section 5 preclearance regime. LDF presented oral argument and represented a group of African-American voters in the Supreme Court.
2014: Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Michigan's Proposal 2 voter initiative, which amended the state's constitution to make affirmative action illegal in public employment, public education or public contracting purposes. LDF represented the Plaintiffs challenging Proposal 2.
2016: Fisher v. University of Texas II, Following the remand to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the Supreme Court again upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action. LDF represented the Black Student Alliance and the Black Ex-Students of Texas, Inc. in oral argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals and in an amicus brief in the Supreme Court.
2016: Veasey v. Abbott, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, held that Texas's 2011 voter photo identification law violated the Voting Rights Act and that there was sufficient evidence to find that the Texas Legislature might have passed the law for the purpose of discriminating against Black and Latino voters. LDF presented oral argument in the Fifth Circuit on behalf of Black students and the Texas League of Young Voters.
2017: Buck v. Davis, the Supreme Court reversed the death sentence of Mr. Duane Buck because Mr. Buck's trial attorney introduced evidence that suggested Mr. Buck was more likely to commit violent acts in the future because he is black. LDF represented and presented oral argument on Mr. Buck's behalf in the Supreme Court.
2018: Stout v. Jefferson County Board of Education and Gardendale Board of Education, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, blocked the City of Gardendale's attempt to secede from the larger Jefferson County school system because Gardendale's purpose was to create a mostly white school system separate from the more racially diverse Jefferson County schools. LDF represents and presented oral arguments on behalf of Black students opposed to the separation.
2020s
2020: LDF v. Barr, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted summary judgment to LDF and ruled that the Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice violated multiple requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, halting the Commission's operations until it was brought into compliance with federal law.
2020: Harding v. Edwards, in September 2020, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana granted a preliminary injunction that required Louisiana to extend the early voting period by three days and provided voters at highest risk of serious illness from COVID-19 with the option to vote by mail in the November and December 2020 primary and general elections.
2020: Thomas v. Andino, in May 2020, the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina granted a preliminary junction that prohibited South Carolina from enforcing its witness signature requirement for absentee voters in the June 2020 primary elections. The court found that forcing people to obtain the signature of a third-party witness on their absentee ballot would endanger their health and safety in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020: NAACP v. United States Postal Service, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the US Postal Service's widespread disruptions in mail delivery violated federal law and risked delaying the delivery of mail-in ballots — thereby causing voter disenfranchisement. On October 10, 2020, the court granted a preliminary injunction motion suspending service changes that had disrupted mail delivery. The court issued a series of additional orders leading up to the November 2020 General Election, which required the US Postal Service to take extraordinary measures to ensure the timely delivery of ballots and to provide daily updates about the delivery status of mail-in ballots. LDF represented the NAACP and individuals in the litigation.
2023: Allen v. Milligan, on June 8, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a preliminary injunction against the State of Alabama's 2021 congressional districts and ruled that Alabama's map is racially discriminatory in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court also upheld the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act in the redistricting context. LDF represented Milligan plaintiffs in the lower courts and presented oral argument on behalf of the Milligan appellees in the Supreme Court.[citation needed]
2024: Robinson v. Ardoin, In June 2022, a federal court preliminary enjoined Louisiana's congressional map and ordered the state to draw a map with two majority-Black districts. But the Supreme Court of the United States put this order on hold temporarily pending its decision in Milligan. After the Milligan ruling, the Supreme Court returned the case to the lower courts, which ultimately gave the Louisiana legislature the chance to draw a map with a second majority-Black district. And, in January 2024, the Legislature responded by adopting a new VRA-compliant map. LDF represented the Robinson plaintiffs in the Supreme Court and lower courts.
2024: Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, on January 6, 2023, a three-judge district court ruled against the State of South Carolina's 2021 congressional map and concluded that the map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and intentionally discriminatory in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Supreme Court took the case up on direct appeal and heard oral arguments on October 11, 2023. LDF represented the plaintiffs at trial and presented oral argument on their behalf in the Supreme Court.
Presidents and director-counsels
The position was installed under the title of "Director-Counsel" on March 20, 1940, until 1993, when Elaine Jones got appointed and the official title was expanded and hyphenated.
A number of prominent attorneys have been affiliated with LDF over the years, including Barack Obama who was an LDF cooperating attorney. The following, non-exhaustive list of LDF alumni demonstrates the breadth of positions these attorneys have held or currently hold in public service, the government, academia, the private sector, and other areas.
Debo Adegbile, former acting President-Director Counsel for LDF (2012–2013), argued twice in the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act, and a current Commissioner for the United States Civil Rights Commission.
Jacqueline A. Berrien, chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate on December 22, 2010. Immediately prior to her appointment, Ms. Berrien was the Director of Litigation and Associate Director-Counsel for LDF.
Robert L. Carter, an assistant counsel at LDF until its 1956 separation from the NAACP, and an architect of Brown v. Board. After the separation, he replaced Thurgood Marshall as the General Counsel for the NAACP. He won numerous cases at the Supreme Court and was a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Drew S. Days, III, the first African-American Assistant Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division and the United States Solicitor General from 1993 to 1996.
Jean E. Fairfax, organizer, educator; creator of the division of legal information and community service and director of that division from 1965 to 1984
Jack Greenberg succeeded Thurgood Marshall and served as LDF's second director-counsel from 1961 to 1984. Greenberg began as an Assistant Counsel at LDF in 1949. He argued more than 40 of LDF's cases before the Supreme Court, including a portion of Brown v. Board. While he was director-counsel, LDF successfully defended the civil rights movement, ended "all deliberate speed" in desegregation the first employment discrimination lawsuits in the Supreme Court, and brought about a national moratorium on the death penalty. After leaving the LDF, Greenberg was a professor at Columbia Law School and the former Dean of Columbia College.
Lani Guinier, voting rights advocate and the first African-American woman tenured professor at Harvard Law.
Elaine Jones, successfully argued Furman v. Georgia. LDF's fourth director-counsel and the first female director-counsel.
Pamela S. Karlan, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice since January 2021 and the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School. She is frequently mentioned as a potential democratic appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Thurgood Marshall, LDF founder and the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. Marshall left LDF in 1961 to become a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit before going on to become Solicitor General of the United States and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Theodore Shaw, Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Professor Shaw served as the fifth president and director-counsel.
Christina Swarns, the Executive Director of the Innocence Project. She previously served as the director of litigation for LDF and, in that role argued and won Buck v. Davis in the U.S. Supreme Court. She is one of the few African-American women to have ever argued a case in the Supreme Court.
↑http://www.naacpldf.org/timeline.aspx, The official site provides a Flash-based history of the major cases taken on by LDF. This article has taken extensive portions of this page with the permission of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the copyright holder of that material.
Clemon, U. W., and Bryan K. Fair. "Making Bricks Without Straw: The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Development of Civil Rights Law in Alabama 1940-1980." Alabama Law Review 52 (2000): 1121+. online
Greenberg, Jack. Crusaders in the Courts: Legal Battles of the Civil Rights Movement (2004)
Hooks, Benjamin L. "Birth and Separation of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund," Crisis 1979 86(6): 218–220. 0011–1422
King, Gilbert. Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America (2012) Pulitzer Prize; excerpt
Klinetobe, Charles. "Jury Trials and Gerrymanders: The Legal Effort to Maintain Segregation in July of 1957." The Historian 68.2 (2006): 221–240. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6563.2006.00141.x
Mosnier, L. Joseph. Crafting Law in the Second Reconstruction: Julius Chambers, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Title VII. (2005).
Tauber, Steven C. "The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the U.S. Supreme Court's Racial Discrimination Decision Making," Social Science Quarterly 1999 80(2): 325–340.
Tauber, Steven C. "On Behalf of the Condemned? The Impact of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund on Capital Punishment Decision Making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals," Political Research Quarterly 1998 51(1): 191–219.
Tushnet, Mark V. Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936–1961 (1994)
Ware, Gilbert. "The NAACP-Inc. Fund Alliance: Its Strategy, Power, and Destruction," Journal of Negro Education 1994 63(3): 323–335. in JSTOR
Watkins, Steve. The Black O: Racism and Redemption in an American Corporate Empire (2013) specific to the 1993 Haynes v. Shoney's case. portions in Google Books
