Rob McDuff

Photo by Jaro Vacek

Robert B. McDuff, 46, looks too rumpled and carefree to be about to argue the Democrats' congressional redistricting case before the U.S. Supreme Court in December. But, a cursory look around the Jackson attorney's office—in a slightly crumbling North Congress house with crooked steps and peeling gray paint—reveals that he's about more than power. He wants to make a difference.

Witness the "Poverty" symposium posters leaning against the wall, the photos of McDuff with Presidents Carter and Clinton (two with the latter) and the filing from Branch v. Mississippi Republican Executive Committee lying on top of his desk.

The civil-rights attorney will tell the justices that the GOP-configured Third Congressional District dilutes minority voting strength in the state and, in a flipflop of the old segregationist days, that the district map drawn up by the state courts is more representative of the people than that chosen by the U.S. Justice Department.

December won't be the first time McDuff, a Hattiesburg native, has argued before the high court. He successfully challenged the termination of a mother's parental rights in 1996 and argued a case of police misconduct in 1995. In 1991 he argued a racial-discrimination suit over Louisiana election districts. McDuff has spent his career taking on causes, many of them the liberal sort: death penalty, indigent defendants, gay custody rights, prison conditions.

When McDuff was 11, Klansmen killed black businessman and activist Vernon Dahmer in his hometown in 1966. "I wondered two things: 'Why did they kill this guy?' and 'What was it that the lawyers were doing?'" he says. He later graduated from Millsaps College with a political science degree, then from Harvard Law School in 1980. Soon after, he joined the esteemed Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C., the same group that had helped blacks fight discrimination and segregation since 1963. "I had a real sense that black people had gotten a raw deal in our country. I believe they still do; that legacy is with us."

After stints in cities like Memphis and New Orleans, McDuff, who has never chosen to marry, moved home for good in 1992. Here both life and career are good. "I can have more of an impact here than I could in Austin, Texas, or North Carolina," he says. "There aren't many people here practicing civil-rights law, and certainly not many white natives. I've got a pretty interesting job."

— Donna Ladd
Story appended Oct. 31, 2002.

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