The Dover school board did not violate the constitution.
The first amendment begins "Congress shall make no law". To my knowledge congress has made no law regarding the teaching of intelligent design one way or the other.
If congress made a law mandating the teaching of I.D., then that would be unconstitutional. Since the Congress has made no such law, the federal court has absolutely no standing to decide this case.
I see no constitutional authority for a federal court to usurp the authority of the local school board in order to require the teaching of one "theory" over another.
Spot on.
Strictly speaking, I think you're right. The Supreme Court has distorted the First Amendment regarding religion for 60 years now.
It's just too bad that the Dover School board attacked science, instead of the overreaching court rulings of the last 60 years. They wasted their time attacking a valid scientific theory (and valid *fact* as well, since evolution does in fact occur). Religion has *always* loses when it goes up against science. Always has, always will, all subjects.
As far as how this court ruled, the judge had no choice, because of the precedents in play. The Supreme Court must address those.
Did you not bother to read the pleadings of each side in this case? If you had, you will discover that the Law Firm representing the Dover School Board (a firm that sought a "test case" on ID) made no such argument. Can you guess why? Because legally, the argument is rubbish. See next paragraph for elaboration.
Did you also not attend Civics Class when they discussed the 14th Amendment, and the effect it has on application of the 1st Amendment? I believe the legal phrase is "incorporation" -- a doctrine upheld by the Supreme Court that incorporates most of the Bill of Rights and applies them to state and local government. You may not like incorporation, you may have a legal argument against it, but it is a moot point, because for the present, the Supreme Court says that's what the 14th amendment means. That's why the religiously motivated law firm representing the religiously motivated School Board members chose to NOT make the argument you are proffering -- it won't fly, because it is contrary to well-established Constitutional law.
I see no constitutional authority for a federal court to usurp the authority of the local school board in order to require the teaching of one "theory" over another.
No one said it "required the teaching" of anything; what it did say, in part, is this:
Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.