Posted by Thomas More Society (June 23, 2010 at 11:25 pm)
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has cited the amicus (”friend of the court”) brief authored by Thomas More Society Special Counsel Paul Linton in its lengthy opinion on the appeal of capital defendant Adrian Estrada, who had been found guilty for murdering both 17-year old Stephanie Sanchez and her thirteen-week old unborn child. Linton filed the amicus brief on behalf of the Texas Alliance for Life and is cited on page 54-55 in footnote 40.
While Estrada’s lawyers won a reversal and remand for a new punishment hearing, his constitutional challenge to the Texas statute that makes it a capital offense to intentionally or knowingly murder an unborn child—a statute that was also drafted by special counsel Paul Linton—was roundly rejected. [Continue reading ...]
Posted by Thomas More Society (June 23, 2010 at 11:09 pm)
Last week, a judge denied a motion by the Thomas More Society to dismiss a case against a small homeschooling group in Indiana, the Fishers Adolescent Catholic Enrichment Society (FACES). While the State of Indiana refuses to let up on the small faith-based group, the Thomas More Society continues to vigorously defend the trial of the families involved.
“We remain confident that we will prevail in this hearing,” said Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of Thomas More Society. “Our clients did go out of their way to accommodate the claimed disability of the home-schooled student for whom the discrimination charge was brought. We believe that the evidence will show—overwhelmingly—that the student’s mother wasn’t just asking for a ‘reasonable accommodation’ for her daughter, but for her own dictated form of accommodation, which is far more than any law does or should require.” Brejcha also said that the retaliation claim is equally baseless as no group can survive, let alone function, when its members are free to flout and circumvent the decisions of its established leadership. [Continue reading ...]
Posted by Thomas More Society (June 18, 2010 at 3:06 pm)
Paul Benjamin Linton, special counsel to the Thomas More Society, has just had an article published in the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal enitled Long Road to Justice: The IL Supreme Court, the IL Attorney General, and the Parental Notice of Abortion Act of 1995. In it, he explores the Illinois General Assembly’s 35 year struggle to enact an enforceable statute requiring the consent of or notice to the parents of a pregnant minor before she undergoes an abortion.
These efforts to secure an enforceable, effective parental notice law in Illinois have been repeatedly thwarted, despite polls that consistently show dominant majorities of citizens favoring parental notice (including even many abortion supporters) and the existence of parental involvement laws in all Midwestern states surrounding Illinois. In many cases, the statutes themselves were struck down as violative of the governing federal constitutional standards. In another instance, the Illinois Supreme Court failed—or refused—to adopt procedural rules for confidential, expedited “bypass” hearings and appeals, measures deemed necessary for parental involvement laws to satisfy federal constitutional requirements.
Linton explains through the most comprehensive history to date of the 1995 Parental Notice of Abortion Act how both the Illinois Supreme Court and the Illinois Attorneys General—past and present—have failed the people of the state by not taking the steps needed to implement and enforce an otherwise constitutional law, and one with overwhelming public support.
Most recently (see our post on columnist Dennis Byrne’s OpEd), while Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s attorneys defeated the ACLU’s latest attack on the parental notice law, in which the ACLU had charged that the law violated Illinois’ state constitution, her trial attorneys agreed with the ACLU that the law’s enforcement could be “stayed,” i.e., suspended, for as long as it took for the ACLU to appeal the ruling to higher courts. In effect, she won the lawsuit but then threw in the towel! Cook County Chancery Judge Daniel Riley, although dismissing the ACLU’s lawsuit as meritless, entered an “Agreed Order” suspending the law’s enforcement yet again. Thomas More Society, representing downstate county prosecutors, tried repeatedly to intervene in the case to mount a robust defense of the parental notice law and to oppose this latest “stay” of enforcement. But its efforts were rebuffed by Judge Riley when the Attorney General and ACLU objected. The Society has appealed those rulings and will seek to vacate the “stay” when the case reaches the Illinois Appellate Court.
Read the complete article below (Click “Fullscreen” for the best reading experience):
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has cited the amicus (”friend of the court”) brief authored by Thomas More Society Special Counsel Paul Linton in its lengthy opinion on the appeal of capital defendant Adrian Estrada, who had been found guilty for murdering both 17-year old Stephanie Sanchez and her thirteen-week old unborn child. Linton filed the amicus brief on behalf of the Texas Alliance for Life and is cited on page 54-55 in footnote 40.
Last week, a judge denied a motion by the Thomas More Society to dismiss a case against a small homeschooling group in Indiana, the Fishers Adolescent Catholic Enrichment Society (FACES). While the State of Indiana refuses to let up on the small faith-based group, the Thomas More Society continues to vigorously defend the 
Paul Benjamin Linton, special counsel to the Thomas More Society, has just had an article published in the