Editorial: Pennsylvania evolution lawsuit ends

Thursday, Dec. 22, 2005 | 7:39 a.m.

Demonstrating that even in law, only the fittest survive, a federal judge has called a Pennsylvania public school district's order to teach an alternative to evolution unconstitutional and ruled that "intelligent design" may not be mentioned in the district's biology classes.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III on Tuesday said Dover Area School Board members violated the Constitution when they mandated that the biology curriculum include a brief discussion of the theory that some natural processes are so complex, a higher intelligence must have created them. This mention was to be preceded by a disclaimer in which teachers were to tell students that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is "not a fact."

The policy, enacted in October 2004, ignited a controversy and prompted a federal lawsuit, on which Jones issued his ruling this week. "The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the board who voted for this ID (intelligent design) Policy," the judge wrote in his opinion.

A majority of Dover-area voters had already reached the same conclusion, as evidenced by the Nov. 8 election when they voted in a slate of Democrats and ousted eight Republican school board members responsible for the curriculum mandate.

Attorneys for the school board had argued that members were only trying to improve the curriculum and offer alternatives to Darwin's theory, which holds that natural selection drives evolution.

But Jones said they were hiding their true intentions. "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," he wrote.

It's not that intelligent design or creationism shouldn't be discussed or taught. It's that, as Jones so rightly wrote, "it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom."

Religious teachings have value. They also have their venue, and public school classrooms aren't it.