Congratulations lefties, Commies, and God haters. You have just contrubuted to even worse education for these children, now due to lack of funds. Pat yourself on the back, you have retained your dictatorship.
Why didn't they ACLU represent these parents pro-bono. Just curious.
The solicitor, Stephen Russell, said in an interview that he will recommend that the school board not try to seek reimbursement of legal fees from former board members who advocated adoption of the intelligent design policy.
"I have a problem with board members being sued for taking actions that are later found to be wrong," Russell said. "Nobody would run for office."
That's disappointing. The only people who should have to pay for the inanity of the board members are those board members.
It's about accountability. If you promote an agenda that's so flagrantly un-Constitutional that you have to hide it, and lie about it on the stand, then you don't deserve to be shielded from the consequences.
Actions taken in good faith are one thing. But actions taken in bad faith? They should pay the bills.
"Nobody would run for office"? We don't need more people like that running for office.
So we don't support "loser pays" anymore?
"He said several school board members "were hell-bent on getting what they wanted." [emphasis added]
Deliciously ironic phrasing, considering that he was characterizing the pro-ID dingbats on the Dover School Board. Let's see what the Conservative Republican judge, who was appointed to the Federeal bench by Bush, had to say about the actions of the jerks on the school board:
.... this case came to us [the court] 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.
This is misleading. It makes it sound as if the school board decided to hire the Thomas More Law Center after the board's actions were challenged in court.
Instead, it's the other way around -- the Thomas More Law Center initiated this whole fight, and "retained" the Dover school board to be its test case. The Thomas More Law Center had actually spent a few years shopping around the country for a school board willing to be a test case for "Intelligent Design" in the classroom, including ones West Virginia, Michigan, Minnesota, and several other states, which all declined the "offer". The (former) Dover school board was the first one stupid enough to volunteer.
The Thomas More Law Center very much *should* be held accountable for the county's legal fees... This debacle was their idea from the start.
Also, the article might give the wrong impression when it says, "...Russell said, 'It may be very difficult to win the case" because it would be perceived that the intelligent design policy "was initiated for religious reasons.'" The problem at trial wasn't that the policy could be *perceived* as being religiously motivated, it's that an overwhelming amount of testimony established beyond doubt that it *was*, for a fact, religiously motivated.
Finally, the article's description of the "ID policy" is too sketchy, and gives the impression that the policy was booted as unconstitutional merely for stating that, "evolution is 'not a fact' and that intelligent design is an alternative explanation to the origin of life". The actual policy involved much more than that, and the details are critical when it comes to the reasons why the policy was (correctly) found unconstitutional.
Not appealing the decision of the judge in this case would make it virtually impossible to recover any fees from any party. If the school board tried to recover legal fees from the former board members or the Thmas More organization, they would have standing to appeal the decision. An appeal in this case would not be all that expensive to conduct and the ACLU and new xchool board would likely not want to go that route. They would be risking the reversal of a very dubious trial court decision.
It might not even matter at that since a trial court would likely dismiss any case against the former school board on a motion for summary judgment for failure to state a claim.
The ACLU and Anti-American activist-leftist Federal Judges 1
Americans and Freedom 0
But then who is keeping score?
Ouch. That's gotta hurt.
This is sad for the students and parents of this school district but it is great news for students in the rest of the country. Now other school boards will think twice before forcing the teaching of "Intelligent design".