*Administration of Barack Obama, 2016 *

**Statement on the Death of Former Deputy White House Counsel Cassandra Q. Butts **

*May 27, 2016 *

To know Cassandra Butts was to know someone who made you want to be better. And Michelle and I were fortunate enough to count her as a friend for most of our adult lives.

Cassandra and I met as law students, and we quickly discovered a shared passion for jazz and for public service. It was a passion she'd chase for the rest of her life—on Capitol Hill, at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, at the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and as an adviser of mine—but above all, as a citizen, always pushing, always doing her part to advance the causes of opportunity, civil rights, development, and democracy. Cassandra was someone who put her hands squarely on that "arc of the moral universe" and never stopped doing whatever she could to bend it towards justice.

We lost her this week, at far too young an age. But along with all her friends and family, we find comfort in the knowledge that all the good she did for so many lives on. She made America better. She made so many lives better, including ours. We admired her so much. And we will miss her deeply.

NOTE: The statement was released by the Office of the Press Secretary as a statement by the President and the First Lady.

*Categories:* Statements by the President : Deaths :: Butts, Cassandra Q.

*Names:* Butts, Cassandra Q.; Obama, Michelle*.*

*Subjects:* Deaths : Butts, Cassandra Q.

*DCPD Number:* DCPD201600359.