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Posted on 02/22/2006 6:52:51 AM PST by Nextrush
The Dover Area school board voted Tuesday night to pay 1 million dollars in legal fees to the attorneys that successfully sued the school district over its intelligent-design policy.... After board members voted, Beth Eveland, one of the parents who sued the district, told the board she and other plaintiffs at the meeting considered it a fair offer. However, she said they were dismayed that the taxpayers and children were left with the bill and believed the old board members should be held accountable. The smallest amount of accountability is an apology, she said.... Heather Geesey, the only remaining member from the previous board, said after the meeting that she took offense to Eveland's remarks. "I don't think I have anything to apologize for," she said. Former board member Ronald Short also isn't planning to apologize. "I don't have anything to apologize for," Short said. "I believe in what the board did before." The $1 million dollar figure was the result of an agreement worked out between plantiffs' attorneys and the district's solicitor. In exchange, the board agrees it will not appeal.... Rothschild, the plantiffs lead attorney, said lawyers will request an order in court entitling the plantiffs to more than $2 million in costs.... Plaintiffs attorney wanted to make sure that other public school districts pondering whether to pursue a religious agenda will think twice, Rothschild said, We think it's important that the public record will reflect how much it costs to stop an unconstitutional action," he said. "Still, we also recognize that this is a small school district."...... Approximately $250,000 will go directly to recovering out-of-pocket expenses, Rothschild said, and will be divided among American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and Pepper-Hamilton. The rest will go toward the ACLU and Americans United.....
(Excerpt) Read more at ydr.com ...
A bigger bill awaits when a new teachers contract comes down. The old school board plan would have cost 2 or 3 million dollars and the new one's probably will cost between 5 and 10 million dollars. A big 3 to 5 million dollar bill will be the responsibility of the new Dover school board.
Many of the better teachers will then leave, and more dregs will be brought in to teach the children in the system poorly resulting in declining SATs, fewer making it into college, and a general destruction of the local economy.
On the other hand, everybody will be safe in not hearing "Praise Jesus" or "Intelligent Design" in the public schools.
Sounds like a great victory.
Let's see, plunging your schoold district into a mess of lawsuits and lies that you knew you couldn't win? I think that deserves an apology.
This is bizarre. How can they award a million dollars in legal fees (with $2 million more pending) in a technical legal dispute about the appropriateness of a particular item in the curriculum? What exactly was the policy re intelligent design that led to this lawsuit? I thought damages or financial penalties were only awarded when there was some kind of liability issue involved, some tangible harm that was done.
Burn their houses down.
What exactly was the school district's policy? Did they require teachers to say some adominable thing like, "The theory of evolution has critics, some of which propose an alternate theory called intelligent design"? Is that their crime?
I went to the full article, and it sounds like all the school board did was have teachers mention that there was an alternate theory to evolution known as intelligent design. So you advocate million dollar lawsuits every time a school district offers students an alternative viewpoint, and presents it as an alternative or minority viewpoint? Shall we also have million dollar lawsuits if school districts present students with alternative views on political philosophy, the cause of cancer, the importance of low-carb diets, or who really wrote Shakespeare's plays? This is complete insanity.
The big problem was they tried to present ID as an alternate scientific theory (which it isn't) and perjured themselves in saying there was no religious agenda behind their decision.
I'm still waiting, probably in vain, for the perjury charges against these guys.
First, it's not a scientific alternate theory; second, their intent was religious. They shouldn't have had to perjure themselves under oath (and have the judge catch them at it) if they knew they were in the right.
I think you are misstating the issue. The court was not asking the defendants to declare their religious beliefs, just to explain whether those religious beliefs were the motivation for the ID policy they adopted.
...and, the court's authority to do so rests on the fact that the defendants put their religious motivations at issue.
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It's positively medieval to even think of such a thing. I'm outraged the matter came up in court. That judge needs to be removed so he can go home and play with his rack and other instruments of torture in his basement where he can't bother civilized people.
H. Conclusion[emphasis added]The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board's ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.
Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs' scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.
To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.
The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.
With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.
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.
To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID. We will also issue a declaratory judgment that Plaintiffs' rights under the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been violated by Defendants' actions.
Defendants' actions in violation of Plaintiffs' civil rights as guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 subject Defendants to liability with respect to injunctive and declaratory relief, but also for nominal damages and the reasonable value of Plaintiffs' attorneys' services and costs incurred in vindicating Plaintiffs' constitutional rights. Case 4:04-cv-02688-JEJ Document 342 Filed 12/20/2005 Page 138 of 139
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Does the Dover area school board not have the brains to ask each and every taxpayer to file an amicus brief, explaining why paying more than the costs, is unjustified?
Perhaps the Dover Schools should turn around and sue the guys who pushed the policy on them. (I don't remember who came to Dover to push the idea; it may have been Discovery Institute.) Wearing an Old Grey Bonnet, they fell right over the White Cliffs.
I submit that even a so-called conservative judge can be wrong.
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