When Hicks defended the City of Austin's campaign finance ordinance, it was reported he charged $350/hr with a $55,000 retainer to defend a city law supported by local Democrats. And that is just for Hicks.
This lawsuit will definitely go the appellate level, so this is not chump change to pursue against the state. I'm finding it difficult to believe the three professors reached into their own pockets to fund this. Naturally, none of the reporters looking into this story asked anything about that.
Al, I had the same thought when I saw all the ink addressed to the idea of academic freedom and that it was an issue of first impression in the Fifth Circuit. Although it seems to me the most likely outcome would be to create bad precedent for the notion of academic freedom in this circuit. If you were trying to broaden that, this seems to be absolutely the wrong case for it - and the Fifth Circuit appears skeptical of the idea anyway.
Also disappointing to see that three professors and three lawyers can't even diagram a sentence based on their legal arguments, let alone understand Justice Scalia's point about a prefatory clause.