Late Friday afternoon, we filed our brief in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia concerning the Inaugural prayer challenge.  Michael Newdow, who brought the case against the Pledge of Allegiance, has filed a lawsuit against President Bush and the Inaugural Committee.  In his complaint, Dr. Newdow has asserted that members of the clergy should not be permitted to offer a prayer at the Presidential inauguration. 

The case is going to be heard in just a matter of days.  Dr. Newdow is already promising a quick appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.  As stated earlier, we have already submitted our brief to the trial court and Senior Counsel Jim Henderson will be in court this week monitoring the proceedings.  We are also working on an appeal brief right now, assuming Dr. Newdow will appeal once the district court rules against him. 

A similar case was brought in 2000 and we were successful in that challenge.  Subsequently, that case went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which ruled in our favor.  There is a possibility that if Dr. Newdow does not get a quick response at the Court of Appeals, then he will take the case to the Supreme Court of the United States.  We are anticipating that legal action as well.  I have assembled our Supreme Court practice team in Washington to be prepared to file the necessary briefs and legal documents in order to make sure the Inaugural prayer will be given. 

You will see that as an Action Item today, we are calling upon members of the American Center for Law and Justice to join with us in an urgent petition to the Senate to keep the prayers and other religious references in the Inaugural ceremony.  We think it is important that those who are in charge of these events hear from us over the next few days.  The Inaugural will take place on January 20^th.  I anticipate that we will have quite a bit of legal action between now and then regarding this attempt to remove all religious references from the ceremony.   We have posted to the website some new articles that have come out about the Inaugural prayer challenges and will keep you updated as this story develops in the days ahead.