ReutersPaul Simao wrote:Judge Rejects Georgia School Board Evolution Stand
Thu Jan 13, 2005 02:32 PM ET
ATLANTA (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Thursday ordered a Georgia school district to remove stickers challenging the theory of evolution from its textbooks on the grounds that they violated the U.S. Constitution.
In a ruling issued in Atlanta, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said Cobb County's school board had violated the constitutional ban on the separation of church and state when it put the disclaimers on biology books in 2002.
The stickers 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."
"We are pleased. The law was pretty clear," said Maggie Garrett, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the board on behalf of a group of parents who were opposed to the disclaimers.
The ACLU argued that the school board had demonstrated a clear bias about the material, effectively pushing the teaching of creationism and discriminating against non-Christians and followers of a number of other religions.
Creationism refers to the belief that life was created by God. Evolution, which is accepted by most scientists, contends that life developed from more primitive forms and was dictated by natural selection.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that creationism could not be taught in public schools alongside evolution.
The Georgia school board, which introduced the stickers at the behest of hundreds of parents, many of them religious conservatives, contended that the stickers only advised students to keep an open mind.
The board's lawyer was not immediately available for comment on Thursday.
The federal ruling came about two months after the re-election of President Bush, who won the overwhelming support of religious conservatives with his stands against gay marriage and abortion.
The Cobb County case also evoked memories of the 1925 "Monkey Trial" of John Scopes, a Tennessee biology teacher who was found guilty of illegally teaching evolution.
Georgia Evolution Sticker Removed
Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
Georgia Evolution Sticker Removed
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SDNW4 Nation: The Refuge And, on Nova Terra, Al-Stan the Totally and Completely Honest and Legitimate Weapons Dealer and Used Starship Salesman slept on a bed made of money, with a blaster under his pillow and his sombrero pulled over his face. This is to say, he slept very well indeed.
SDNW4 Nation: The Refuge And, on Nova Terra, Al-Stan the Totally and Completely Honest and Legitimate Weapons Dealer and Used Starship Salesman slept on a bed made of money, with a blaster under his pillow and his sombrero pulled over his face. This is to say, he slept very well indeed.
Doug Gross, AP wrote:Georgia Evolution Stickers Ordered Removed
Federal Judge Calls Them Unconstitutional
ATLANTA (Jan. 13) - A federal judge Thursday ordered a suburban Atlanta school system to remove stickers from its high school biology textbooks that call evolution ''a theory, not a fact,'' saying the disclaimers are an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
''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,'' U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said.
The stickers were put inside the books' front covers by public school officials in Cobb County in 2002. They 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.''
''This is a great day for Cobb County students,'' said Michael Manely, an attorney for the parents who sued over the stickers. ''They're going to be permitted to learn science unadulterated by religious dogma.''
In a statement, the school board said it was disappointed by the ruling and will decide whether to appeal. A board spokesman said no decision had been made on when, or if, the stickers would be removed.
''The textbook stickers are a reasonable and evenhanded guide to science instruction and encouraging students to be critical thinkers,'' the board said.
The stickers were added after more than 2,000 parents complained that the textbooks presented evolution as fact, without mentioning rival ideas about the beginnings of life, such as the biblical story of creation.
Six parents and the American Civil Liberties Union then sued, contending the disclaimers violated the separation of church and state and unfairly singled out evolution from thousands of other scientific theories as suspect.
At a trial in federal court in November, the school system defended the stickers as a show of tolerance, not religious activism.
''Science and religion are related and they're not mutually exclusive,'' school district attorney Linwood Gunn said. ''This sticker was an effort to get past that conflict and to teach good science.''
But the judge disagreed: ''While evolution is subject to criticism, particularly with respect to the mechanism by which it occurred, the sticker misleads students regarding the significance and value of evolution in the scientific community.''
The case is one of several battles waged around the country in recent years over what role evolution should play in the teaching of science.
Last year, Georgia's education chief proposed a science curriculum that dropped the word ''evolution'' in favor of ''changes over time.'' The idea was dropped amid protests from teachers.
A school district in Dover, Pa., has been locked in a dispute over a requirement that science students be told about ''intelligent design'' - the concept that the universe is so complex it must have been created by some higher power.
Officials in Alabama said they do not think Thursday's ruling affects the several-paragraph evolution disclaimer in the front of that state's science books.
The disclaimer says that ''any statement about life's origins should be considered theory, not fact,'' and lists four of the ''many unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbook.'' One of the questions is, ''How did you and all living things come to possess such a complete and complex set of 'Instructions' for building a living body?''
