Moment of Silence Appeal Brief
filed by Illinois Attorney General

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has filed her long-awaited Brief of the Appellant with the 7th Circuit US Court of Appeals in the Illinois Student Prayer Act mandatory public school "Moment of Silence" case.  This is the case in which my daughter, Dawn Sherman, successfully sued to stop Buffalo Grove High School from wasting her time, each morning, by making her stand around and do nothing, during instructional time paid for by the taxpayers, when Dawn wanted to be studying and learning.

Despite our differences on the Moment of Silence case,
Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Dawn and I remain good friends.
Photo by my wife, Celeste, at this year's Gay Pride Parade,
on June 28, 2009, in the Boystown neighborhood in Chicago.

The Appeal Brief is 63 pages long, so it's going to take me a little while to read it before I give you my initial impressions on it.  My attorney for the Moment of Silence litigation, Richard Grossman, gets even longer to say what he thinks.  He gets 30 days to file his Reply Brief with the Appellate Court on Dawn's behalf.

UPDATED on October 29, 2009:  The Alliance Defense Fund has filed an amicus ("Friend of the Court") brief in support of the Attorney General's brief.  As a result of this recent filing, the Appellate Court has extended the time for my side to file our Reply Brief.  The new due date for our brief is December 9, 2009.

Dawn and I have always maintained that public school students have the right to pray before school, after school and even during school, if that's what they want to do.  What we are opposed to is a law that forces teachers to stop teaching during instructional time so that the Christian kids can waste time praying when they should be studying.