Partner and Chair of the Education Law Practice Group, Mary L. Dowell, was quoted in a September 29, 2011 Law360 article, "Lawyers To Supreme Court: Hear These Cases." Law360 asked leading attorneys in their practice areas what cases or issues the justices should weigh in on this term. Commenting on the "Religious Banners" case, Mary said, "It would be interesting for the court to accept Johnson v. Poway Unified School District, __ F2d__, 2011 WL 4071974 (C.A.9), upholding the right of a school district to order a high school math teacher to remove banners from his classroom which explicitly invoked religion. Whether one agrees with the Ninth Circuit's ruling or not, it would be helpful to schools and colleges to know whether its use of a Pickering balancing test rather than forum analysis is the proper way to evaluate such cases. It would be even more useful if the court would take the opportunity to clarify the "academic freedom" exception to Garcetti v. Ceballos, despite footnote 12 in the Johnson decision finding that it only applies to colleges and universities."