[00:00:06] Speaker 00:
Good morning, Your Honors.

[00:00:08] Speaker 00:
Joseph DeMott on behalf of Liddell Grisel and her three minor children.

[00:00:12] Speaker 00:
I'd like to reserve three minutes for rebuttal, please.

[00:00:15] Speaker 02:
Watch your clock.

[00:00:17] Speaker 00:
The allegations in this case are harrowing.

[00:00:20] Speaker 00:
According to the complaint, the Grisel children enrolled at San Alejo Elementary School through a program for homeless youth.

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They were the only black students in their respective classrooms, and they were repeatedly mistreated because of their race.

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Ultimately, the school district unilaterally disenrolled all three children over their mother's objection.

[00:00:42] Speaker 00:
Then, when Mrs. Grisel sued the school district on the children's behalf, the children's claims were immediately dismissed under this court's decision in Johns V County of San Diego, which categorically bars a parent from bringing a lawsuit on behalf of her own children unless she retains a lawyer.

[00:01:01] Speaker 00:
Johns is wrongly decided three times over.

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First, it defies 28 U.S.C.

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Section 1654, which broadly guarantees natural persons the right to proceed pro se.

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Second, the rule announced in Johns is unconstitutional, as it deprives minors of equal access to the courts and abridges parents' fundamental interest in the care, custody, and control of their children.

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And third, nearly three decades of experience have shown that Johns is bad policy, as it effectively bars the courthouse doors to indigent children whose parents are not fortunate enough to find pro bono representation.

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And to be fair to the judges who decided Johns, it was motivated by a noble goal, protection of a minor's legal rights.

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Johns rests on the premise that when minors have claims that require adjudication, and I'm quoting, they are entitled to trained legal assistance so their rights may be fully protected, end quote.

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The problem is there is no right to trained legal assistance in civil cases.

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And there are tens of millions of children in the United States whose families cannot afford a lawyer and are simply not able to obtain free legal services.

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either because their families are slightly above the very low income threshold to qualify or because the demand for free legal services, even for those who are indigent and qualify based on the income threshold, the demand far outweighs the supply for those services.

[00:02:34] Speaker 00:
And there's a bunch of evidence that we cited in our briefs, you know, recent scholarship and the like,

[00:02:39] Speaker 00:
That just makes clear the result of this bright-line rule that children are always better off litigating with counsel or not litigating at all is to simply bar indigent children from the court.

[00:02:54] Speaker 04:
We're bound as a three-judge panel.

[00:02:56] Speaker 04:
We're bound by prior three-judge panels.

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There's nothing we could do.

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We can't just say we're going to disregard John.

[00:03:06] Speaker 04:
Johns v. City of San—County of San Diego v. City.

[00:03:11] Speaker 04:
But, you know, the only thing we could do is, as a panel, Sue Esponte call for rehearing en banc, or, you know, say we're bound by Johns, and some other judge could call—could try to call the case en banc.

[00:03:29] Speaker 00:
that's correct your honor and and you know we'd love it if there were a way to distinguish john's when the court appointed us for purposes of this appeal obviously we tried every which way to see if there was a way around it and ultimately we just concluded that our duty of candor to this court as court appointed counsel was to say we think john's is binding you know that being said we filed a separate motion for initial hearing on bank which i understand you know wasn't granted but we still

[00:03:56] Speaker 04:
would urge this panel.

[00:04:11] Speaker 04:
call the case, ask the court to hear the case on the phone.

[00:04:14] Speaker 04:
Is that right?

[00:04:14] Speaker 00:
Exactly, Your Honor.

[00:04:15] Speaker 00:
What we're asking for is for this panel to urge your colleagues to take this case up en banc or to urge the Supreme Court, failing that, to consider this rule.

[00:04:26] Speaker 03:
Mr. DeMott, would it be fair to say that most circuits haven't?

[00:04:30] Speaker 03:
aligned with your view of this?

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I mean, I know there's the Fifth Circuit, but in one of the footnotes in Raskin, it noted all the different circuit courts that have the John's view of this.

[00:04:44] Speaker 03:
Isn't that fair to say?

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I think it's a lot more nuanced than that, Judge Sanchez.

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So I'd say Raskin obviously, you know, expressly rejects the Johns rule.

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But there are a number of other cases that we cited in our briefs.

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I mean, Tindall v. Polteny High School out of the Second Circuit acknowledges that this rule, again, quoting,

[00:05:04] Speaker 00:
may undermine a child's interest in having claims pursued for him or her when counsel is, as a practical matter, unavailable, that this can force minors out of court altogether and result in unredressed violations of children's rights or interests.

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And so there the Second Circuit said, we're going to kind of cut back.

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We're going to say this rule should be applied gingerly, that it shouldn't be the sort of per se rule that there is in John's.

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But that panel did acknowledge older Second Circuit precedent.

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So I'd say the Second Circuit is certainly

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cut back on this this bright line rule.

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Illustra v. Meneo out of the Seventh Circuit, Adams-Extrell-DJW out of the Tenth Circuit, both similarly said this isn't an ironclad rule, which is again different than the Johns rule that the district court applied here, you know, saying to Ms.

[00:05:49] Speaker 00:
Grisel, look,

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I think these are serious allegations.

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I think if this is something that's going on, this needs to be addressed.

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I'm dismissing this for nothing to do with the merits, but you just have to have a lawyer full stop.

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So I think also it's worth noting, and one of these decisions came down just on May 8th, and so it's not even in our reply brief.

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I'm happy to submit a 28-J letter if that'd be helpful to the court.

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But it's Warner v. School Board of Hillsborough County.

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number 2312408 in the 11th Circuit.

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It's an unpublished decision where this 11th Circuit panel acknowledges that they are bound by, again, old 11th Circuit precedent that is in line with John's, but says, boy, there's some really strong arguments, statutory arguments, constitutional arguments, and policy arguments, that this is wrong.

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And so there's a pending petition for en banc rehearing in that case.

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Also, the Sixth Circuit, just in February, in Mares v. Mayfield City School District Board of Education, number 223915, said, yeah, we have these thinly reasoned cases from a few decades ago that just sort of adopt this rule that the Tenth Circuit announced in 1986 with virtually no reasoning and that a couple of kind of

[00:07:07] Speaker 00:
thin reasons have been have been supplied for but boy the Fifth Circuit's decision in Raskin both the majority and the separate opinion are have a much more nuanced view of this and we really think we should reconsider but the claims there were moot and so it was dismissed as moot so I mean yes there is a lot of older precedent out there that is

[00:07:28] Speaker 00:
You know, more or less in line with John's, but there's really a lot of momentum for reconsidering this and I would just suggest that, you know, given three decades of experience with this rule that that it deserves a second look from the en banc court.

[00:07:42] Speaker 04:
Let me ask you this, you know, I think in some in some kinds of cases.

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I understand the argument very well.

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It kind of makes sense to me.

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For example, in the special education kinds of cases, the parent has just as much right as the child to ensure that the children get the appropriate benefits of a special ed situation.

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But this case strikes me as kind of

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The classic kind of case where you'd want a lawyer, it's a civil rights case for damages is what it is.

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It's complex federal court litigation.

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Any proper who tried to take on a case like this would be facing tremendous odds.

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This is very complicated litigation.

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And I can see here, I mean, it makes sense to me that you need a lawyer.

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I'm not going to dispute that, you know, it would be great if everyone could get a lawyer in this type of case.

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At least, you know, we do think that there is a constitutional right, and it's been a statutory right since the Judiciary Act of 1789, and it's similar to what the court held in Ferretta, that if you ultimately decide you don't want a lawyer, that is your right.

[00:09:09] Speaker 00:
That being said,

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I would love to live in a world where everyone who had this kind of relatively complicated case could access free or low-cost legal services.

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That's simply not the world we're living in.

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adopts a bright line rule that says it doesn't matter if the parent decides that given her financial circumstances, given what happened to her children, she wants to do the best she can in court.

[00:09:38] Speaker 00:
Just as many adult pro se litigants, you could say the exact same thing.

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You could say, this is a relatively complex case.

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We would like there to be counsel here.

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And nevertheless, they have

[00:09:49] Speaker 00:
in many instances, as this court well knows, they do proceed per se.

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And so I think our argument is that as a matter of policy, which is primarily what Johns was decided on, it's not good policy to have a rule where tens of millions of minors and their parents just have no realistic option.

[00:10:06] Speaker 00:
It makes the perfect the enemy of the good.

[00:10:09] Speaker 02:
So I have a question.

[00:10:09] Speaker 02:
What limiting principle would you have?

[00:10:12] Speaker 02:
Judge Pai has mentioned some cases where it's allowed.

[00:10:15] Speaker 02:
I think Social Security benefits cases

[00:10:18] Speaker 02:
allow it to.

[00:10:20] Speaker 02:
And I'm just wondering, you know, how would you confine this role?

[00:10:25] Speaker 02:
Sure.

[00:10:26] Speaker 02:
I mean, I don't think you would want the role to be that any parent can represent their children under any circumstances.

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And I realize there's an exception where the parents have rights in the action.

[00:10:39] Speaker 02:
Could your client

[00:10:43] Speaker 02:
figured out a way to assert her own rights in this action and then be able to represent the children?

[00:10:50] Speaker 00:
No, I don't think so, Your Honor, because these are the children's claims.

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And the statute, 28 U.S.C.

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section 1654, as the First Circuit, unanimously held, everyone there, both the majority and the separate opinion held,

[00:11:06] Speaker 00:
That is a statutory right that belongs to mine.

[00:11:08] Speaker 02:
Is it the children's claims?

[00:11:09] Speaker 02:
I mean, doesn't, I mean, you're saying it's because the right to free public education, the right to public education in the California Constitution belongs only to the children, not- No, no, no, no.

[00:11:23] Speaker 00:
I'm not saying that.

[00:11:24] Speaker 00:
What I'm saying is there's a federal statutory right in section 1654 that allows any party to litigate pro se or to litigate through counsel.

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And just as with every other federal right, when you have a minor and you do look to state law to determine, you know, who is a minor for these purposes right in California, someone could be emancipated as young as 14 and then they could proceed pro se on their own behalf.

[00:11:49] Speaker 00:
In some states like Mississippi, the age majority is 21.

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So there is a limited role for state law insofar as you're determining who can just show up on their own behalf.

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But if we're in a situation where it's a minor who can't appear on their own behalf, all of their rights are wielded by the parents.

[00:12:07] Speaker 00:
I mean, that's true of the right to demand a jury trial or to waive that right.

[00:12:12] Speaker 03:
But then it sounds like you'd

[00:12:13] Speaker 03:
aren't placing a limiting principle to this.

[00:12:17] Speaker 03:
Even Raskin was more restrained than what I'm hearing you argue, because Raskin was discussing it in the context of whether federal state statute wanted to create these carve-outs for specific situations.

[00:12:30] Speaker 03:
But it sounds like what you're saying is, under the California Family Code, any claim that a minor could assert should be assertable through the guardian or parent.

[00:12:42] Speaker 00:
We're saying under federal law.

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I mean, under both this federal statute and under the Constitution, state law has a really limited role to play in determining, you know, who counts as a minor.

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But apart from that, this is a federal right and it's a fundamental right that the founders prized and enshrined in the Judiciary Act of 1789.

[00:13:00] Speaker 00:
So we're saying parents can

[00:13:02] Speaker 00:
assert that on behalf of their minor children, but two limiting principles.

[00:13:06] Speaker 00:
First of all, this is limited to natural persons.

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And so it would not affect all of the separate law about corporations and estates and the need for those non-natural legal entities to be represented by counsel.

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And the second limiting principle is that the court still has a role for oversight.

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And so it's well established that, and there are cases we cite in our papers,

[00:13:29] Speaker 00:
that if a parent is just waving a minor's right willy-nilly without getting anything in return, for example, the right to a jury trial, the court may step in and say, hold on, we have a role to play here in ensuring that the minor's rights are protected, and we're not going to allow you to

[00:13:47] Speaker 00:
waive that or agree and agree to a settlement that the court says is not in the minors interests.

[00:13:53] Speaker 00:
The court does have a special oversight role in cases involving minors.

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I would submit that to the extent you have a situation where the parent is doing something that the court thinks is really off the wall.

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I mean, we have cases where there's a conflict of interest between the parent and the child.

[00:14:08] Speaker 00:
the court can certainly step in there but what we're saying is the general presumption under the constitution and under this federal statute is minors have a right to proceed pro se if under state law the person is too young or what have you then the parent can exercise that right on the minor's behalf

[00:14:26] Speaker 00:
Just as the parent can exercise every other right that a minor enjoys under federal law and there's just no Logical or legal basis for carving out this right and saying the parent gets to choose Do you bring a lawsuit in the first place?

[00:14:39] Speaker 00:
How do you conduct this lawsuit?

[00:14:41] Speaker 00:
You know, are we gonna have a jury demand?

[00:14:42] Speaker 00:
Are we gonna agree to settle etc?

[00:14:44] Speaker 00:
The parent is charged

[00:14:46] Speaker 00:
as their child's guardian with making these critical decisions.

[00:14:52] Speaker 00:
And what Johns does is it just applies an irrebuttable presumption that no, the court knows best.

[00:14:57] Speaker 00:
It's never in a minor's interest to come into court pro se with their parent exercising that federal statutory and constitutional right.

[00:15:07] Speaker 00:
I see that my time's up, so I'll save the last three minutes for rebuttal.

[00:15:10] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:15:29] Speaker 01:
Good morning, Your Honors.

[00:15:31] Speaker 01:
May it please the court, Jennifer Creighton, on behalf of San Marcos Unified School District and San Diego Elementary School.

[00:15:38] Speaker 01:
I would like to preface my comments, just taking issue with the characterization of this matter as one with a school district discriminating against and violating the civil liberties of three children who are described as

[00:15:56] Speaker 01:
destitute and without the ability to secure counsel, and then taking a tactical advantage by bringing a motion for lack of capacity in order to have the case just tossed out, because that's not exactly any way that this happened.

[00:16:13] Speaker 01:
The record does not support that conclusion.

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If we go back to this, this is a McKinney-Vento matter, and this family applied for educational rights with the district

[00:16:26] Speaker 01:
pursuant to that program.

[00:16:28] Speaker 01:
Once they secured housing and left the state of California, the district notified them that their McKinney-Vento status was ending for that year.

[00:16:40] Speaker 01:
They were no longer homeless.

[00:16:41] Speaker 01:
They were not even in the state and they were expecting that San Marcos Unified School District would continue to educate them forever while they lived in another state.

[00:16:52] Speaker 01:
The record does not support a conclusion that

[00:16:56] Speaker 01:
Ms.

[00:16:56] Speaker 01:
Grisel is destitute or homeless or poor or unable to secure an attorney or that she tried to secure an attorney.

[00:17:06] Speaker 01:
And in fact, she filed this appeal before the deadline imposed by the district court to come back to court with an attorney and file an amended complaint.

[00:17:17] Speaker 01:
She has a history of filing actions in pro se in the court and frequently

[00:17:24] Speaker 01:
makes allegations such as these that are not founded.

[00:17:28] Speaker 01:
So the history of this case is not the test case that should determine whether or not Johns is wrong.

[00:17:37] Speaker 01:
As my colleague aptly indicated, Johns can't be overturned by this panel unless end-bonk review is granted.

[00:17:47] Speaker 01:
And there are many, many reasons why it shouldn't be.

[00:17:51] Speaker 01:
As

[00:17:52] Speaker 01:
Your Honor Sanchez pointed out, there are many, many circuits that have felt that Johns is appropriate.

[00:18:01] Speaker 01:
There are many, many public policy reasons why Johns is sound.

[00:18:07] Speaker 01:
Council began to discuss some of the oversight responsibilities of the court when a matter is handled on behalf of a minor, with or without an attorney.

[00:18:17] Speaker 01:
The court has oversight as to whether or not a compromise

[00:18:21] Speaker 01:
of a claim is appropriate and can step in if there's something that doesn't appear to be appropriate.

[00:18:27] Speaker 01:
If the court overturned Johns and Ms.

[00:18:31] Speaker 01:
Grisel can represent her minor children in court without the assistance of an attorney and she waives that jury trial by failing to deposit her fees on time or she fails to oppose the motion for summary judgment or she doesn't designate an expert when she's supposed to.

[00:18:49] Speaker 01:
Is the court then going to step in and have its own conflict between its duty of impartiality to coming in and trying to manage the litigation being handled by an individual who doesn't know what they're doing in order to also meet the court's obligation of fidelity and responsibility toward the minor?

[00:19:13] Speaker 01:
It puts the court in an untenable situation.

[00:19:17] Speaker 01:
The court has also found that there are many, many reasons why.

[00:19:21] Speaker 01:
I an attorney should be handling these types of cases as Judge Piaz noted.

[00:19:30] Speaker 01:
This is a complex case.

[00:19:32] Speaker 01:
It was 117 page complaint with 40 something causes of action.

[00:19:38] Speaker 01:
And it is not a case that someone like Miss Grisel can handle on behalf of three children.

[00:19:46] Speaker 01:
We have

[00:19:47] Speaker 01:
a number of reasons why all of the other circuits, not all of them, but the vast majority of the other circuits are saying that it is not appropriate for a parent to come in and not only serve as the guardian ad litem, but also the attorney.

[00:20:05] Speaker 01:
The interests of the children have to be protected by the court.

[00:20:09] Speaker 01:
The appellant suggests that the interests of the children are being cast aside by Johns because they are lacking the ability to obtain counsel.

[00:20:20] Speaker 04:
But as- So let me ask you this.

[00:20:24] Speaker 04:
Counsel seems to be arguing that what we've done is we've just adopted a bright line rule.

[00:20:31] Speaker 04:
If you're a minor under California law,

[00:20:36] Speaker 04:
Parents cannot represent the children in court.

[00:20:40] Speaker 04:
They can't proceed pro se.

[00:20:41] Speaker 04:
The children can't proceed pro se.

[00:20:43] Speaker 04:
They need a guardian ad litem or a parent or something.

[00:20:48] Speaker 04:
And they need an attorney, bottom line, any case.

[00:20:50] Speaker 04:
And I'm not even sure in the Ninth Circuit how we handle social security cases.

[00:20:54] Speaker 04:
But he's, counsel seems to be making a nuanced argument, which I take.

[00:21:01] Speaker 04:
that there may be certain circumstances where the parent's claim is coincidental or even derivative, I guess coincidental of the child's claim.

[00:21:16] Speaker 04:
I made the reference to special education.

[00:21:20] Speaker 04:
But there could be other instances where

[00:21:23] Speaker 04:
that takes place, why shouldn't the court take another look at the hard and fast rule to see if there's a more nuanced approach that the court should be taking in these cases?

[00:21:34] Speaker 04:
I mean, this is not—in my view, this is a tough case because—and your point at the very beginning, that this may not be the best case for a

[00:21:45] Speaker 04:
to re-examine the rule, because this is a hard K. It's a claim for damages under Section 1983.

[00:21:53] Speaker 04:
And that's tough litigation, even for lawyers.

[00:21:57] Speaker 04:
But what's wrong with a more nuanced approach to this?

[00:22:02] Speaker 01:
Well, Your Honor, first of all, there is the ability, as you noted with Social Security and administrative proceedings, for parents to bring claims for

[00:22:14] Speaker 01:
benefits because of the connection between the benefit to the parent as having responsibility for caring for that minor.

[00:22:27] Speaker 01:
There are opportunities for parents to bring claims under the IDEA in the special education context when their claims are interspersed with their children's for example if

[00:22:43] Speaker 01:
The child had to have a nonpublic placement and the parent had to incur all of those costs.

[00:22:49] Speaker 01:
The case law says that that parent can then bring a claim to recover those damages.

[00:22:53] Speaker 01:
But in this particular case, Ms Grisel is claiming that, for example, a teacher used a pejorative emoji on a board trying to teach a sight word and that that was harassing to her child.

[00:23:10] Speaker 01:
She alleges that

[00:23:12] Speaker 01:
other children bullied some of the minor children because they were very good at athletics.

[00:23:20] Speaker 01:
These types of claims, they're not interspersed with Ms.

[00:23:24] Speaker 01:
Grisel's claims.

[00:23:25] Speaker 01:
She had no claims.

[00:23:26] Speaker 01:
The district court judge asked her at the hearing whether any of these claims were her claims, and she admitted that they were not.

[00:23:35] Speaker 01:
And so John's case is directly on point with this case, and in fact,

[00:23:41] Speaker 01:
In Johns, the district court allowed the plaintiff 30 days to find an attorney and come back.

[00:23:47] Speaker 01:
And in our case, the district court gave her twice that amount of time.

[00:23:51] Speaker 01:
And at no point has she ever said, I talked to 15 attorneys and nobody would take my case.

[00:23:56] Speaker 01:
I went to the ACLU and they wouldn't take my case.

[00:23:59] Speaker 01:
There's no evidence of that in the record.

[00:24:01] Speaker 01:
There are many situations where indigent plaintiffs with good cases can find lawyers, whether they're contingency based,

[00:24:10] Speaker 01:
whether they're pro bonos, whether they are volunteer lawyers or programs like the ACLU or the NAACP, there is no evidence in this record whatsoever that Ms.

[00:24:22] Speaker 01:
Grisel availed herself of any of those opportunities.

[00:24:25] Speaker 01:
And the fact that she has so many prior cases that she's filed pro se suggests that she had no intention of doing so, which is supported by the fact that she filed her notice of appeal within 10 days or so of the district court's

[00:24:39] Speaker 01:
admonishment that she had 60 days to file an attorney.

[00:24:43] Speaker 01:
The very reason why these children need to be represented by competent counsel exists.

[00:24:52] Speaker 01:
This district court judge was attempting to protect those children and not get into a conflict situation like I just discussed.

[00:25:01] Speaker 01:
There are dozens of reasons why a parent should not be able to file and proceed

[00:25:09] Speaker 01:
with a claim on behalf of minors.

[00:25:12] Speaker 01:
There are conflicts between parents and the children become pawns and one parent files against the other.

[00:25:18] Speaker 01:
We have laws prohibiting people from getting involved in things where their emotions run too high and it clouds their judgment.

[00:25:26] Speaker 01:
just like a person can't operate on their own child.

[00:25:30] Speaker 01:
They might have Googled it and think they know how to do it, but they're not a licensed medical provider, they can't do it.

[00:25:36] Speaker 01:
There are so many reasons and many of them are put forth in all of the papers for your consideration that this would just be a very bad decision to overturn John's and therefore we're requesting that the court not entertain the motion for en banc review.

[00:25:54] Speaker 02:
So the facts in this case occurred in part over the COVID period and there was long distance learning going on.

[00:26:04] Speaker 02:
So what's so problematic about her living in Colorado, but you know, doing the

[00:26:13] Speaker 02:
long-distance learning during COVID.

[00:26:15] Speaker 02:
I mean, everybody was doing that.

[00:26:17] Speaker 02:
Yes, Your Honor, that's true.

[00:26:18] Speaker 02:
There was nothing wrong with it.

[00:26:20] Speaker 02:
She was not canceled from the program.

[00:26:22] Speaker 02:
You're arguing that these facts are bad.

[00:26:25] Speaker 02:
She moved out of the district.

[00:26:28] Speaker 02:
And I'm just wondering, since these allegations happened during COVID, why living in the district makes it a bad case?

[00:26:39] Speaker 01:
So under McKinney-Vento, if you establish that you're

[00:26:43] Speaker 01:
without appropriate residents, you can apply for an education in that district where you're applying and pursuant to the statute that lasts for the year and you reapply the following year.

[00:26:57] Speaker 01:
People who are homeless tend to have transitory living situations, so when the district was.

[00:27:05] Speaker 01:
It informed that she was living out of state.

[00:27:08] Speaker 01:
She received the customary notice that your

[00:27:11] Speaker 01:
You have to reapply if you're back in the district.

[00:27:15] Speaker 01:
The district receives funding, state and federal funds to educate children within its district, and it can't educate people all over the country because at one point they did live in San Marcos, so she could have at the end of the year or over the summer reapplied for residency pursuant to the McKinney-Vento Act for the following school year.

[00:27:40] Speaker 01:
The notice, I believe, went out in May.

[00:27:42] Speaker 01:
The school year ended sometime in June.

[00:27:44] Speaker 01:
The children were eligible to continue the school year.

[00:27:48] Speaker 01:
They were just notified that if they were going to continue the following year, they had to reapply.

[00:27:52] Speaker 01:
So the characterization of this of their getting kicked out of the schools.

[00:27:56] Speaker 02:
They weren't kicked out of the school.

[00:27:58] Speaker 02:
They just needed to reapply and they failed to reapply.

[00:28:00] Speaker 01:
They were notified of the requirement that their eligibility would be ending at the end of the year.

[00:28:09] Speaker 01:
They never tried to reapply.

[00:28:11] Speaker 01:
This lawsuit was filed.

[00:28:13] Speaker 01:
And as far as we know, Ms.

[00:28:17] Speaker 01:
Grisel has stayed in Colorado.

[00:28:20] Speaker 03:
And that notification applies to everyone annually, whether or not they've moved out of the district?

[00:28:25] Speaker 01:
Every McKinney-Vento eligible student, yes.

[00:28:36] Speaker 01:
All right, I guess I have nothing further if you have no further questions.

[00:28:40] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:28:41] Speaker 02:
Thank you, Council.

[00:28:43] Speaker 02:
Mr. DeMott, I'll give you two minutes.

[00:28:48] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:28:49] Speaker 00:
I'm struck not only by what I heard from the district, but perhaps even more by what I didn't hear.

[00:28:53] Speaker 00:
I heard no argument that Section 1654 doesn't apply to minors.

[00:28:57] Speaker 00:
I heard no response to our constitutional arguments.

[00:29:00] Speaker 00:
And I heard no real attempt to defend the reasoning of Johns, particularly in a world where so many Americans

[00:29:06] Speaker 00:
just realistically cannot obtain legal representation.

[00:29:10] Speaker 00:
I think all of that is extremely telling.

[00:29:12] Speaker 00:
Johns just doesn't withstand scrutiny.

[00:29:15] Speaker 00:
As for, you know, my colleague standing up and asserting disputed facts that aren't in the record, we're at the pleading stage.

[00:29:22] Speaker 00:
The allegations govern.

[00:29:24] Speaker 00:
I don't know where this thing about so many prior cases is coming from.

[00:29:27] Speaker 00:
That's nowhere in the record of the briefs.

[00:29:28] Speaker 00:
I will say that council has not accurately stated what the school district did at ER 250 to 252.

[00:29:36] Speaker 00:
The school district expressly declined to find her ineligible.

[00:29:41] Speaker 00:
It said it was not in her children's best interests and they were being disenrolled.

[00:29:45] Speaker 00:
So it says the purpose of this letter is to notify you that the district has determined that it is in the best interest of your three children to be disenrolled from the elementary school.

[00:29:54] Speaker 00:
It acknowledged that there's a statutory presumption that the mother

[00:29:57] Speaker 00:
decides what's in the children's best interest and it found that was rebutted, it didn't make any of these findings about where they lived or their eligibility.

[00:30:04] Speaker 00:
So again,

[00:30:05] Speaker 00:
You know, as for whether this is a test case, the district court blocked them at the threshold.

[00:30:10] Speaker 00:
The district judge said, my hands are tied, see Johns.

[00:30:14] Speaker 00:
You know, you have to find a lawyer.

[00:30:15] Speaker 00:
So there was no reason for her to build a record of how many attorneys she spoke to or what her financial status was.

[00:30:21] Speaker 00:
I mean, I would note she not only enrolled her students through this program for homeless youth, but she has established and been allowed to proceed in form of paupers here.

[00:30:29] Speaker 00:
So the notion that she has plenty of resources and just didn't want a lawyer strains credulity.

[00:30:35] Speaker 00:
Lastly, they do not need to be her own claims.

[00:30:38] Speaker 00:
They are the children's claims, and she is empowered to vindicate them, just as she is empowered to vindicate the children's other federal rights.

[00:30:47] Speaker 00:
Johns should be overruled.

[00:30:49] Speaker 00:
Indigent children deserve better.

[00:30:50] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:30:51] Speaker 02:
Well, thank you, and thank you for accepting the appointment to make the arguments.

[00:30:55] Speaker 00:
It was a privilege, Your Honor.

[00:30:56] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:30:57] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:30:58] Speaker 02:
Okay, Grisel versus Santolino Elementary School in San Marcos School District is submitted and we'll take up HODL law versus US Securities and Exchange Commission.