We went to work on a new video urging kids to stay home.
“Don’t get out of bed.
“Don’t get on the bus.
“Don’t set foot in school.
“Until our appeal to stop homework gets heard.”
The video went viral. The next day, forty thousand kids stayed home. The day after that, three hundred thousand more. By Thursday, 90 percent of all public school kids in California had the “flu.” The state superintendent made a phone call.
Not to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
Not to Mr. Kalman.
Not to me.
Not to the governor.
He called the clerk at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He begged him to put us on the docket right away.
And that’s how our case got to the front of the line.
On the plane to San Francisco, Alistair asks the flight attendant for a napkin. Then he asks her for a pen. Then he asks me for my autograph because he thinks our homework case is going to make me famous.
“Shut up,” I say.
“No, really. The boy who took on homework. I want your autograph while you’re still flying coach.”
“I am not autographing a napkin for you, Alistair,” I say. “You’ll use it to wipe Sriracha from your face.”
“Okay,” he says, “then sign this.”
He lifts his shirt. “Make the bellybutton the a in Sam.”
He holds the pen out to me, but I don’t take it. I don’t want to jinx our case.
“Tell you what,” I say. “I’ll give you my autograph if we win.”
Alistair puts the napkin on his tray but pockets the pen.
Behind us, through the crack made by Alistair’s fully reclined seat, I can hear the sweet whisperings of Sadie and Sean. He’s quizzing her on her SAT vocab.
“Clandestine.”
“Secretive.”
“Exonerate.”
“Free from guilt.”
“Neophyte.”
“Beginner.”
“Inveigh.”
“Protest.”
“Surfeit.”
“Excess.”
“Kiss me.”
“On a plane?”
Then it goes quiet.
Across the aisle, Jaesang and Catalina are thumb wrestling. Alistair flips through the in-flight magazine, tearing out restaurant reviews and recipes. Meanwhile, Mr. Kalman reads the LA Times. I see him fold it over, then fold it over again, then fold it a third time, as if he’s trying to make a giant paper football, which is odd because Mr. Kalman doesn’t seem like a paper football kind of guy. But when it’s one-eighth of its original size, he leans over and hands it to me. His bony finger taps a headline:
NINTH CIRCUIT TO HEAR BOY’S PLEA FOR HOMEWORK HELP
I read the article and when I get to my name, it feels like there’s a hummingbird trapped in my stomach: Eleven-year-old Sam Warren was suspended for refusing to do homework over the Columbus Day holiday.
A few sentences later, it says: His attorney, Mr. Avi Kalman, is no neophyte—hey, I know that word!—to constitutional law. A longtime advocate of children’s rights, Mr. Kalman argued for the plaintiff in Lee v. Oklahoma School District before the US Supreme Court.
I look over at Mr. Kalman. I know he wanted me to see my name in the paper, and that’s why he folded it up for me, but I’m glad I saw the part about him, too.
“Mr. Kalman,” I say after folding up the article. “I was thinking about what the judge said, how if it had been just me suing and not the whole class, he might’ve ruled with us. We need to find a way to show that homework is bad for all kids, not just one.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Backpacks.”
“Backpacks?”
“We should weigh them. Not just ours, but all of them. If we got kids across the country to weigh their backpacks and we kept a running total on the website, that could be a pretty huge number.”
“I like the way you’re thinking, Sam. Like an attorney. We’ll have Sean add it to the site.”
When we land in San Francisco, Mr. Kalman tells the cab driver, “The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, please.”
That’s all he has to say. He doesn’t have to give an address because every cab driver in the city knows where the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is. On the way, Mr. Kalman tells us about some of the famous cases that were heard there.
One was a lawsuit brought by Vanna White of Wheel of Fortune. An electronics company made an ad that had a robot turning over letters the way Vanna White does. She thought they were making fun of her, or worse—copying her. “It’s not fair if they make money off the thing I made famous,” she said.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Vanna White. The robot had to stop turning over letters.
Should the police be allowed to slap a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s car, then watch where it goes, even if they don’t have a warrant?
The Ninth Circuit said yes, they can. Following a suspect isn’t the same as searching them.
The court also said that California’s Proposition 8 banning gay marriage was unconstitutional. The Equal Protection Clause says you should be able to marry the person you love, even if they are the same sex as you.
The other side appealed to the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld the Ninth Circuit’s decision. Now everybody who wants to, gay or straight, can marry.
And when the president tried to stop people from just seven countries from entering the US, the Ninth Circuit said no, you can’t do that. Not without proving why those countries’ citizens are a greater threat than all the other countries’ citizens.
So the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decides some big issues. Their next big issue: homework.
We get out of the cab and have to make our way through a crowd. It’s mostly kids playing hooky on a Monday and holding up signs that read:
STOP HOMEWORK NOW.
SAVE OUR CHILDHOOD.
WELCOME TO SAM FRANCISCO.
That last one makes me smile.
Inside, it’s a crowded courtroom like last time, only now Mr. Kalman and Livingston Gulch go at it in front of three judges
