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There's something I don't understand about this case. If the guy doesn't have custody and the child is a practising Christian who has no problem with the Pledge, how does the father have standing to pursue the case? If the premise is the child is being harmed and the reality is she isn't, how did the case ever get off the ground?

Can some Freeper lawyer please explain?

And Linda was great. I kept hearing how smart this guy is (doctor, lawyer) but he seemed liked an idiot.

There's something I don't understand about this case. If the guy doesn't have custody and the child is a practising Christian who has no problem with the Pledge, how does the father have standing to pursue the case? If the premise is the child is being harmed and the reality is she isn't, how did the case ever get off the ground?

I'm not a lawyer, just a lowly paralegal, but I'd say it was his donation of his demon seed to the mother.

I'm no lawyer, but it sure would seem to me that the courts would view this case as being fraudulently brought, especially since he's been bragging all over TV about his cleverness in using his daughter to give him standing.

"I kept hearing how smart this guy is (doctor, lawyer) but he seemed liked an idiot."

Maybe he should diagnose himself as psycopathic, declare himself legally incompetent, and sue himself for malpractice. At least he'd do an honest day's work....

There's something I don't understand about this case. If the guy doesn't have custody and the child is a practising Christian who has no problem with the Pledge, how does the father have standing to pursue the case? If the premise is the child is being harmed and the reality is she isn't, how did the case ever get off the ground? Can some Freeper lawyer please explain?

Newdow's case was dismissed in the lower court based on a ruling that the claim failed to state a cause of action. This is a preliminary ruling based only on the allegations of the complaint. This means the case never went to trial and nothing ever had to be proved, only alleged.

The appellate court (9th Circuit) reviews only the record from the court below. It does not make any findings of fact. Therefore, for the purpose of the appeal it had to take Newdow's allegations as true.

Now, where Newdow got too-clever-by-half was when he started gloating about his victory and said something like "it never was about my daughter, I just had to play the game to get it through the system." By doing that he basically admitted the case was a sham.

The federal courts do not countenance frivolous pleadings. There is even a special rule, Rule 11, addressing sanctions for such conduct.

While most people think the 9th Circuit took a mulligan on the ruling by staying it until further review, I believe they were well within their rights to stay it to consider imposing sanctions for sham pleading.

In PA, there is the concept of legal and physical custody, physical custody being who has the child at what times, etc..Legal custody is basically who has the right to determine where the child goes to school, the right to medical records and to make medical decisions and the like. If the rules in that state are similar, the father would have standing as a joint-legal custodian even if he barely sees the child (the weight to be given to his decisions would obviously depend on the rational of his decision as compared to the mother, as well as his familiarity with the child). This is probably how he survived a challenge to standing.....his shared "legal" custody. As was said by another poster, if the parents could not agree, he would have to begin a court action, which I assume is how this started.
All that being said, there would still be a serious problem if he made allegations concerning the affect the pledge had on his daughter.