A federal judge has ruled that a Pennsylvania public school district cannot require the teaching of — or even standardized disclaimer about — Intelligent Design in biology classes.
The Dover Area School Board violated the Constitution when it ordered that its biology curriculum must include “intelligent design,” the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled.
The school board policy, adopted in October 2004, was believed to have been the first of its kind in the nation. Eight families then sued to have intelligent design removed.
[…] The Dover policy had required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade biology lessons on evolution. The statement says Charles Darwin’s theory is “not a fact,” has inexplicable “gaps,” and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook, “Of Pandas and People,” for more information.
The judge was not dismissive of ID, only of its conflation with science in the classroom.
Jones said advocates of intelligent design “have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors” and that he didn’t believe the concept shouldn’t be studied and discussed. “Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom,” he wrote.
The full statement that the school board required to be read:
The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part. Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations. Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what
Intelligent Design actually involves. With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.
Wow. Well, if it’s not what the state academic standards call for, if the instruction is not going focus on it, and if discussion is to be left to “individual students and their families,” it does make one wonder what the heck the whole point of having a standardized statement like that is for …
Would that were the end of it, but I suspect that (a) appeals will occur, and/or (b) other school boards will come up with other ways to try to sneak this creationism-in-drag back into science classes. More’s the pity.
Money quote from the ruling (emphasis mine):
Although Defendants attempt to persuade this Court that each Board member who voted for the biology curriculum change did so for the secular purposed of improving science education and to exercise critical thinking skills, their contentions are simply irreconcilable with the record evidence. Their asserted purposes are a sham, and they are accordingly unavailing, for the reasons that follow.
We initially note that the Supreme Court has instructed that while courts are “normally deferential to a State’s articulation of a secular purpose, it is required that the statement of such purpose be sincere and not a sham.” Edwards, 482 U.S. at 586-87 (citing Wallace, 472 U.S. at 64)(Powell, J., concurring); id. at 75 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment). Although as noted Defendants have consistently asserted that the ID Policy was enacted for the secular purposes of improving science education and encouraging students to exercise critical thinking skills, the Board took none of the steps that school officials would take if these stated goals had truly been their objective. The Board consulted no scientific materials. The Board contacted no scientists or scientific organizations. The Board failed to consider the views of the District’s science teachers. The Board relied solely on legal advice from two organizations with demonstrably religious, cultural, and legal missions, the Discovery Institute and the TMLC. Moreover, Defendants’ asserted secular purpose of improving science education is belied by the fact that most if not all of the Board members who voted in favor of the biology curriculum change conceded that they still do not know, nor have they ever known, precisely what ID is. To assert a secular purpose against this backdrop is ludicrous.
Finally, although Defendants have unceasingly attempted in vain to distance themselves from their own actions and statements, which culminated in repetitious, untruthful testimony, such a strategy constitutes additional strong evidence of improper purpose under the first prong of the Lemon test. As exhaustively detailed herein, the thought leaders on the Board made it their considered purpose to inject some form of creationism into the science classrooms, and by the dint of their personalities and persistence they were able to pull the majority of the Board along in their collective wake. Any asserted secular purposes by the Board are a sham and are merely secondary to a religious objective. McCreary, 125 S. Ct. at 2735; accord, e.g.,Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 308 (“it is . . . the duty of the courts to ‘distinguish a sham secular purpose from a sincere one.'” (citation omitted)); Edwards, 482 U.S. at 586-87 (“While the Court is normally deferential to a State’s articulation of a secular purpose, it is required that the statement of such purpose be sincere and not
a sham.”). Defendants’ previously referenced flagrant and insulting falsehoods to the Court provide sufficient and compelling evidence for us to deduce that any allegedly secular purposes that have been offered in support of the ID Policy are equally insincere.
Accordingly, we find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the Establishment Clause.
That’s judge-ese for “You’re a bunch of lying assholes and you’re lucky I don’t slam you in jail for contempt of court.” Lovely.
Although I also like this snippet:
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.
And, anticipating the Party Line from folks who will be outraged by the decision:
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.
DOF weighs in, quite intelligently, about some obvious and not-so-obvious unfortunate fallouts from the ruling. Bottom line: the ruling doesn’t do anything for the fundamental problem here, which is that most people don’t understand what religion or science actually are (and thus, I’d add, often mix the two of them up):
Ask 100 adults what science is, and you will learn just how badly our educational institutions have failed to lay the groundwork. The same is probably true of religion – you will be given examples of each, rather than hear a fundamental understanding; “Uh, science is like, laboratories, and computers, and dissecting frogs, and physics and stuff.”
They might say something similar about religion: “Uh, religion is like, Christianity, and Judaism, and Islam and stuff.”
The operative word in both cases is: “Uh…”
Thanks for the summary, Dave. It is VERY refreshing to see a rational response to this nonsense get the upper hand. I hope we see similar things here in Kansas, but I do not count on it. At least not until the pendulum has had time to swing just a little more to the right, anyway…
All the individuals I know in Kansas seem to be bright, intelligent, likeable folks.
All the people I read about in Kansas, though, are thick as bricks. Go figure.