Posted on 06/17/2006 12:19:17 PM PDT by DeweyCA
If the ACLU happens to sue your small hometown and then demands $1 million dollars for their lawyers, would you call them generous and charitable? Strangely enough, that's exactly what they’ve done to the small town of Dover, Pennsylvania. Following the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State's (AUSCS) federal trial court victory in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board (M.D.Penn. 2005), the ACLU recently announced it would "generously" demand only $1 million in costs and attorneys fees. Why $1 million you may ask? According to the ACLU’s Eric Rothschild, “We think it’s important that the public record will reflect how much it costs to stop an unconstitutional action.” But a closer look at the public record shows a highly questionable path was taken to “stop” the Dover Area School District’s evolution policy that was at the heart of the controversy.
In October 2004 the Dover Area School Board made national headlines for its controversial evolution policy. It stated: “Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s Theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Note: Origins of the life will not be taught.” The policy also required school administrators to read to students a statement mentioning problems with Darwin's theory and refers students to school library textbooks discussing the theory of intelligent design. Students were permitted to leave the room when the statement was read. Ironically, the policy itself wasn’t favored by such leading proponents of intelligent design as the Discovery Institute, which opposes mandating the topic in public schools and repeatedly urged the Dover board to repeal its policy well before any lawsuit was filed. (For a detailed treatment of the Dover policy and the ensuing trial see the newly released Traipsing into Evolution.)
A group of parents from the community sued the school district, which led to a trial last fall. The trial proceeded poorly for the Dover Board, as two of its members who testified appeared to give contradictory (and possibly false) testimony on facts leading up to the evolution policy's adoption. The trial concluded in October, with a decision not expected for a couple months.
In the meantime, the Dover Area School District held November elections for the School Board. A slate of candidates formed under the name “Dover C.A.R.E.S.,” to challenge incumbent members by campaigning on an anti-intelligent design policy platform. The Dover C.A.R.E.S. coalition campaigned vehemently against the board's flawed evolution policy, and attacked the theory of intelligent design along the same lines as the ACLU and AUSCS. Dover C.A.R.E.S. decried the litigation costs that the board risked, insisting that, by displacing the incumbents, they would heal the divided community.
In light of their opposition to the Dover Board’s evolution policy, the election season brought charges that Dover C.A.R.E.S. was in league with the ACLU and AUSCS. The incumbent Dover Board members sent letters to residents arguing that the Dover C.A.R.E.S. candidates support the ACLU. One of the Dover C.A.R.E.S candidates, Phil Herman, responded, "I’m very angry. We’re not involved with the ACLU. I would like to see [the incumbents] bring out proof that we are."
The Dover C.A.R.E.S. candidates defeated the incumbents who were up for election. The new Board has an 8-1 majority against the old board's evolution policy.
The election of Dover C.A.R.E.S. endangered the plans of the ACLU and AUSCS. Both groups used the calamitous situation in the Dover Area School District to launch a comprehensive attack against scientists, philosophers, academics, and institutions throughout the nation that advocate the emerging scientific theory of intelligent design. They hoped for an authoritative court decision banning discussion of intelligent design in public schools and government, perhaps via a U.S. Supreme Court decision to ban the theory of intelligent design by subsuming it under creationism and its decision of Edwards v. Aguillard (1987).
Dover was never the primary target of the lawsuit, but rather served as a springboard for striking a blow nationwide against the theory of intelligent design. But the election of a new board that opposed its predecessors’ evolution policy threatened the hopes of the national groups. Even if federal trial judge John E. Jones III declared the old board’s evolution policy unconstitutional, the new board could not be counted on to challenge any decision on appeal to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, let alone the Supreme Court. Furthermore, if the new board were to rescind the old board's evolution policy prior to any ruling by Judge Jones, the case might be settled through a consent decree, which would lack the authoritativeness of a mere federal district court decision. It would also diminish or possibly eliminate any chance of the ACLU or AUSCS's recovery of legal costs and fees from the Dover School District.
One might assume the new board's first item of business would be to rescind the old board's evolution policy. Not so. During their first meeting on December 5th, former Dover Board member David Napierski proposed a resolution to rescind the old board’s evolution policy (prior to any court ruling). Acting as a private citizen, Napierski procured the opinion of an attorney, who said that a vote to rescind the evolution policy could stave off a courtroom defeat and significantly reduce or eliminate legal costs and fees. Yet the new board rejected Napierski’s proposal to rescind the old policy.
What's more, one of the new board members, Bryan Rehm, was both a Dover C.A.R.E.S. candidate and a plaintiff represented by the ACLU and AUSCS in Kitzmiller.
Why would the new board keep in place the evolution policy it once so ardently opposed? The School District’s suit brought national attention and ridicule to the community, and the testimony of the former board members exacerbated the situation. A likely forthcoming decision by Judge Jones would overrule both the board and the theory of intelligent design. By rescinding the old board's evolution policy prior to a court ruling, the new board might have curtailed legal costs and fees incurred by a victorious ACLU and AUSCS. But the new board accepted a likely stinging defeat in court, with painful legal bills attached.
It is now three months following the Dover Area School District’s courtroom defeat and the ACLU, AUSCS, and the new board members have some tough questions to answer. The groups’ ostensibly charitable demands for $1 million in costs and attorneys’ fees (rather than the original $2 million) needs to be explained in greater detail than has henceforth been granted. Dover Board member Rehm hasn’t returned phone calls or answered e-mails.
With a $1 million reimbursement from the Dover School District, and their ongoing public relations campaign to pose as generous compromisers in this struggle, the ACLU and AUSCS are playing up their achievement to the broader American public, over three quarters of which want intelligent design taught alongside Darwinism in schools. In the words of ACLU’s Eric Rothschild following their victory in Dover: "Are we a little bit famous now? Yes, and it’s amazing."
Editor's note: Correction - The Dover Board considered rescinding the evolution policy at the December 5th meeting; Board member Bryan Rehm did not participate in the consideration.
Joe Manzari is a research assistant with the American Enterprise Institute. Seth Cooper is an attorney and former law & policy analyst with the Discovery Institute.
The only shame here is that the school board members aren't *personally* responsible for their lies.
They abused their public office to further stealth political goals, lying all the way. They should have to pay for it, not the taxpayers.
Thomas Moore started this nonsense. They should be financially liable as well, for the un-Constitutional scam they perpetuated with their willing Dover accomplises. Let's go after all the truly guilty parties.
Good question. I would think that the board members and Thomas More would be liable. Especially as the board acted against counsel recommendation to implement More's suggestion.
How the "liberals" work. This is ACLU vengeance. Not only must they win, they must make the losers hurt so badly that fewer people, each time, will dare to even raise their voice, let alone do something that the Anti-Christ Lawyers Union disapproves. A politician could make headway in a campaign by bashing the Anti-Christian Liberal UnAmericans and their methods. It is one sign of poor Republican leadership that this is rarely done, except in fundraising letters to us.
The "truly guilty parties" are the ACLU thugs, who bullied a school district for putting forward for discussion an idea that they don't like.
This wasn't a "political goal." It was an attempt to make an alternative viewpoint, one never heard in the educational process, available to students.
This isn't about liberals, it's about supposed "conservatives" who lied on the stand. There has to be a penalty for that.
There should be a deterrant to make others think twice before they commit the same crime. Actions have consequences. That's a very conservative position, not a liberal one.
I'd prefer that the penalty be paid by the actual conspirators, myself. Let's go after Thomas Moore and the school board members themselves.
Uh, what exactly was the crime this "conspiracy" was intended to bring about? And how do you know that it involved lying?
The "truly guilty parties" are the ACLU thugs, who bullied a school district for putting forward for discussion an idea that they don't like.
Nonsense. The guilty parties are the ones who lied on the stand.
Are you seriously suggesting that crimes shouldn't be crimes when you agree with the political agenda of the criminal?
The board members knew that what they were doing was un-Constitutional. That's why they lied.
It was an attempt to make an alternative viewpoint, one never heard in the educational process, available to students.Why not get the alternative viewpoints of Astrology, Alchemy, Geocentrism and "Hollow Earth Theory" into the highschool curriculums too? </sarcasm>
One thing that always seems to escape these conversations: If the ACLU can sue municipalities for vilations of the 1st amendment and then be re-imbursed by losing defendants, shouldn't the NRA be re-imbursed for successfully suing municipalities for 2nd amendment violations?
Because the Nazi Robots living in the hollow earth know the secret, irrefutable disproof of evolution.
They've threatened to give it to Ann Coulter if we reveal their existence to the general population.
It wasn't unconstitutional.
If they lied, it was wrong and should be punished. But to go after the school district for big bucks is outrageous, as are most of the ACLU's suits.
"corrupt" to implement a policy that one believes to be constitutional, just because courts have said otherwise?
Would you bend over for everything the lunatic courts say?
I'm sure glad your type wasn't predominant at the time of the American Revolution, pal.
They are self-evidently ridiculous viewpoints from the standpoint of reason and evidence. This isn't.
If the ACLU happens to sue your small hometown and then demands $1 million dollars for their lawyers, would you call them generous and charitable?
The fact is that the Discovery Institute and other ID advocates deliberately looked for a 'test' case they knew would end up in court, and the ignorant and incompetent Dover School board volunteered and obliged. They were so incompetent and clueless that the Discovery Institute abandoned them to their inevitable fate. The DI and creationists deliberately picked a courtroom fight that they lost.
So they got the fight they deliberately and with full knowledge aforethought sought, and they lost. Being stupid cost them $1M. And the school board that did this was voted out. And, BTW, the plaintiffs voluntarily reduced the damages they were entitled to from $2M to $1M.
But in the testimony it was revealed that the textbook Pandas had been rewritten from its previous creationist version simply using "copy and replace" so "creation science" was replaced with "intelligent design" in paragraph after paragraph and page after page.
And to make matters worse for the DI, Michael Behe, DI's 'expert witness', admitted under cross examination that his definition of “science theory” was so broad it would also include astrology 1
In fact, the religiously based Thomas Moore Center is now so pissed off with DI that the two groups are not on speaking terms. TMC believes DI made them laughing stocks in the legal world by DI's blindsiding TMC about Pandas, Behe, and generally inept "support". One TMC staffer said, "With friends like DI, who needs enemies? The Discovery Institute practically handed the ACLU the victory."
DI has seen a noticeable drop off in donations after Dover, although they still get about $2.5 million/yr from Ahmanson and other evolution-denier fat-cats.
DI is now reduced to whimpering about "teach the controversy". This is probably the stupidest idea they've come up with yet, because, as everyone knows, there is no controversy in the scientific world and the idea of one is merely of DI's perfervid imagination. And since one can invent "controversies" all day, the "teach the controversy" notion just leads to more parodies and laughs at DI's expense.
See, for example, http://www.re-discovery.org/gravity_1.html Gravity: Just a Theory More parodies on how ID would apply to the Solar System and Periodic Table of the Elements on the site. http://www.re-discovery.org/
http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/2005/08/math_for_believ.html Pythagorean Theorem. Theorems and theories--it is ridiculous to teach geometry to students unless you honestly teach "the controversy"! Deometry is "intelligent design" applied to math and geometry.
http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2 Intelligent Falling fits with "Gravity: Just a Theory", above.
Flying Spaghetti Monster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster http://www.venganza.org/response.htm Thoughtful people have noted that Flying Spaghetti Monsterism has at least the same credibility as the allahs and gods of "sacred" texts in "revealed words". The Pastafarian movement is growing at three times (!) the rate of the ID outfit, Discovery Institute.
Stork theory of babies http://www.antievolution.org/features/evohumor/storkism.html
There were some few accomplishments by the science establishment of the middle ages, but their ability to use the force of law to silence dissident teachings used to be blamed by post-enlightenment scientists for the paucity of those accomplishments.
I guess there's been some recent advance in political science that has shown their way was best after all.
I don't think so. If the district court had dismissed the case as moot, the plaintiffs wouldn't be considered a "prevailing party" and therefore wouldn't be eligible for attorney's fees.
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