Legal Case  | 1999- 2004 Articles

A Personal Message from George Schmidt

January 1, 2004

Dear Colleagues:

Below is the complete text of Judge Posner's decision in the Substance case. It was posted on the court's website yesterday afternoon. I have spoken to our attorneys and with the Tribune, which called me about it.

As of now, we have raised and spent (or borrowed) $203,000 to pursue this case. One of our lawyers has billed us for more than $60,000 for work since May, but we are contesting that.

Since this ordeal began five years ago, we have already won several major victories: (a) the CASE tests have been abolished; (b) no one at Substance is liable in the $1 million "damages" that so terrified people when all this began; (c) indirectly because of CASE, our work helped change the leadership at the Chicago Teachers Union (if you think we would have had the time to do all that stuff in early 2001 for elect PACT, I can discuss it with you, but won't have the time for a few weeks); (d) we are a major part of the national debate on high-stakes testing; Substance survived (although the roughest time has proved to be the last four months, mostly because of our "friends" instead of our "enemies".

and more...

Remaining in the case are our rights as a newspaper under the First Amendment (the Pentagon Papers precedents) and my rights as a newspaper editor and teacher (the Pickering precedents) under the First Amendment. Most of the remaining burdens are on me, since Substance has survived.

If the litigation ends at this point, I have lost my job and my teaching career has been destroyed by this. The only way to hope to retrieve those two things is to continue the litigations.

However, I have already told people that we can no longer sustain the litigation or continue the massive fundraising necessary to hope to sustain it. Unless our attorneys continue pro bono (that is, for free) from this point on -- or others join us without charging us further -- I would not favor trying to continue. This all began five years ago, and people today are facing other priorities for their dollars.

Please read the following and feel free to ask any questions about it. I believe we will be publishing it in the forthcoming Substance, which is still being worked on. As I have made clear to everyone, we continue, but the demands on my time have been enormous of late.

Happy New Year,

George Schmidt