Posted on 01/14/2005 1:52:17 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
A federal judge ordered the immediate removal of evolution disclaimers from Cobb County textbooks Thursday because they convey an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said the stickers, which call evolution "a theory, not a fact," violate both the U.S. and Georgia constitutions.
Affixed to textbooks in 2002, the disclaimers send "a message that the school board agrees with the beliefs of Christian fundamentalists and creationists," Cooper said.
The stickers might be small in size compared with the numerous pages of material on evolution in Cobb textbooks, he said, but "the message has an overwhelming presence."
Cobb school board Chairwoman Kathie Johnstone said the board would have no official comment until it could meet to review the ruling and talk with its attorneys.
The school district issued a statement saying it was "disappointed. . . . and maintains the textbook stickers are a reasonable and evenhanded guide to science instruction and encouraging students to be critical thinkers."
Over the past decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has retreated from a stance supporting strict separation of church and state in public schools and has become more deferential to state and local governments, said John Witte, director of the Law and Religion Center at Emory Law School. This has encouraged some school boards, particularly in the South, to reintroduce religion into public schools in more direct ways, such as allowing prayers before graduation ceremonies and athletic events, and in indirect ways, such as with the evolution disclaimers, he said.
Yet Witte said he was not surprised by Cooper's ruling.
The Supreme Court "has said repeatedly that creationism cannot be required and evolution cannot be prohibited in public school teaching," Witte said. "This case takes the next step in saying that evolution cannot be deprecated either — especially for the sake of protecting the religious sensibilities of those who don't believe in evolution."
30 days to appeal
One issue that must be resolved soon is what to do about the disclaimers on tens of thousands of textbooks. If they are not removed, the school board will be in violation of Cooper's court order. School board attorney Linwood Gunn said removal of the disclaimers in the next few days appears unlikely.
The board has 30 days to decide whether to appeal Cooper's decision to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Curt Johnston, a school board member who was chairman when the board voted unanimously to approve the disclaimers, said he was concerned about the costs of litigating the case further. "I'm not inclined to challenge it . . . having lost it once," he said.
The Cobb disclaimer case, watched by school boards across the nation, is only the latest challenge to determine what can be made part of a school's curriculum concerning the origin of the species without running afoul of the Constitution.
Nick Matzke, spokesman for the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit watchdog group that advocates for evolution instruction, called the judge's decision "a tremendous victory for science, and it's a big defeat for the new creationist strategy."
If the court had allowed the disclaimers to stay, he said, "we would have seen it pop up all over the country. All of the creationist groups have been watching this case. The whole challenge for creationists for the last 30 years has been to try something that will pass constitutional muster."
The lawsuit challenging the disclaimers was brought by six parents who contended the stickers violate the principle of the separation of church and state.
Jeffrey Selman, the lead plaintiff in the case, was thrilled by Cooper's ruling. "I got what I wanted," he said.
His attorney, Michael Manely, who brought the case with the American Civil Liberties Union, said he would press for removal of the disclaimers as soon as possible. "It would be quite a ceremony if children were actually sitting in a classroom pulling these off," he said.
The disclaimers read: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
The stickers stem from a drive begun in 2002 by Marjorie Rogers, a creationist who collected 2,300 signatures on a petition that prompted the school board to stick the disclaimers on the inside front covers of 13 science books used in middle and high schools.
Cobb school board member Lindsey Tippins said that by not recognizing "the nature of the controversy" about evolution, the judge had "erred" in his ruling.
But Gerry Wheeler, executive director of the 56,000-member National Science Teachers Association, said Cooper got it right. "It's great news for the kids in Georgia," he said. "It's a strong signal that religion doesn't belong in the science classroom."
Georgia State University constitutional law professor Lynn Hogue said, "Anti-evolutionists can take their case to the pulpit, but they have no business making it in public school classrooms through stickers in textbooks paid for by taxpayer dollars."
Closely watched case
Cooper, appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994, acknowledged there was no evidence before him that showed Cobb's school board included the statement "evolution is a theory, not a fact" to promote or advance religion.
Nonetheless, he wrote, "By denigrating evolution, the school board appears to be endorsing the well-known prevailing alternative theory, creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not specifically reference any alternative theories."
In light of the historical opposition to evolution "by Christian fundamentalists and creationists in Cobb County and throughout the nation, the informed, reasonable observer would infer the school board's problem with evolution to be that evolution does not acknowledge a creator," Cooper wrote. By adopting the language it did, "the Cobb County school board appears to have sided with . . . religiously motivated individuals."
Edward Larson, law and history professor at the University of Georgia, said the ruling is significant because it discourages other school districts from moving down the same path.
Cooper made particular note of what his decision did not address. It does not, he wrote, resolve whether science and religion are mutually exclusive and he took "no position on the origin of the species."
The judge also said his decision is not about whether public schools can teach the notion of intelligent design and it does not resolve the "ongoing debate regarding whether evolution is a fact or theory or whether evolution should be taught as fact or theory."
Instead, Cooper said, "this opinion resolves only a legal dispute."
They never stop chipping away.
People who behave like evolutionists are people with things to hide.
So apparently this judge has determined that these evolution disclaimers ended up on these textbooks as a result of Congress making a law:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
This man is a moron - did he even study constitutional law? Clinton appointee and Harvard grad. What else do we need to know?
The parents of those children that are Christian should immediatley remove those children from the schools where this has happened. Christians should not be in a place where God is not welcome. End of story.
If true then why is teaching atheism in Science class
permitted? What we have allowed is the very destruction of our society via tolerant neglect and ignorance of the
foundational principles. In short we have allowed the so
called educators supplant the church as the prophets
and moral teachersand having planted the wind we reap the
whirlwind.Reclaiming what has been lsot is always more difficult than hold onto what what was found.
The theory of evolution
Somewhere along the way that phrase has been banned?????
Now it dare not be called 'theory'?
The Secular Taliban strikes again
But such idiots think it's quite wonderful
TO MAKE "SCIENCE"
A RIGID, NARROW, BIGOTED, INQUISITIONAL RELIGION.
SHEESH.
Hypocritical farts.
I guess I'll be the only one here to say this is a good ruling (donning flame proof garb). Religion can be taught at Sunday School and Church. The classroom is the place for science.
"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."To me this simply adds a healthy disclaimer to a textbook in a way that lets children know that scientists usually disagree. They're a argumentative, bickering lot.
This case doesn't have a leg to stand on, even in the scientific community. Every self-respecting scientist would say to himself, "Yes, all we can do is theorize about the origin of the species."
The judge is incompetent, and he proves to me, a believer in the notion of separation of church and state, that the judiciary is going to far with this whole notion.
We started out in the 1950s protecting Jewish people whose parents had been thrown into ovens. We didn't want to make them feel unwelcome here. Now we're down to crass blockage of public skepticism. When skepticism dies, so does freedom. To me, this is healthy skepticism denied by the state. It has no relationship to any reasonable interpretation of the first amendment - except in violation of its core principles.
How is this religious instruction? How do we know that aliens didn't come down to earth and perturb our genetic structure, for example? In what way does this sticker not suggest that?
I'm saying that this sticker means one thing and one thing only: evolution is a theory. It could go farther and say that every single piece of understanding we have about the world is theoretical at some level. Until we have an accepted, grand unified theory of everything, even simple things are up for debate - within reason. It's reasonable to remind students that evolution is a theory under those conditions.
What's disturbing to some teachers is that the fact that what most scientists think of as "evolution" happens between two generations within a single species. Fruit flies "evolve" from one generation to another. For children to be told that this is "just a theory" is sophistry.
On the other hand, the sticker seems to apply to the whole field of evolutionary biology, and anyone who has ever studied science knows that important ideas about phenomonology in science are all theoretical, in other words pieced together from separately proven facts and carefully explained assumptions.
If I'm not mistaken, the science texts refer to it as the theory of evolution. There's no need for the sticker and there was only one reason it was there. The creationists wanted it there.
If the evolutionists were confident that the evidence supported their position then they wouldn't be afraid to inform students of all the facts, not just the ones they like.
What's materially wrong with a creationist wanting something in a textbook if it's a scientifically valid statement?
I don't see this as a battle between evolutionists and creationists. The ACLU is about as scientific as a shrew.
I think you answered your own question.
I agree....well said.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.