As previously reported, US District Judge Clarence Cooper handed down (last week) the much-anticipated ruling in the case of Selman v. Cobb County School District, in which parents challenged a school board decision to place evolution disclaimer stickers in the front cover of some high-school biology textbooks in Cobb County, Georgia, USA.
Contained within the judge’s 44-page ruling was the answer to the question everyone in the Atlanta area seemed to ask: “Would the sticker stick?” Did this 33-word disclaimer, which cautioned students about evolution, violate the US Constitution by “establishing religion”?
Yes, the stickers are an unconstitutional endorsement of religion, said Judge Cooper in his ruling. Therefore, the stickers must be removed from the textbooks.
But was the judge’s decision really a setback for those who support open discussion of evolution and alternative explanations? One might think so based on some of the headlines from newspapers across the world (even a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates is reporting on this court case).
Dr John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research, refuses to see this as a setback, telling the Toronto Star that this case reveals that “evolutionists are just very insecure.” “That sticker did not teach creation or the biblical view of things. It just encouraged students to know that this is not an open-and-shut case,” Morris said.
Determining whether the sticker violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment presented Judge Cooper with many things to consider. First, Judge Cooper ruled back on 31 March 2004, that the sticker passed the first prong of the Lemon test, a method used to analyze whether an act of government is constitutional by meeting three criteria [actually a convoluted invention by the activist judge Sandra Day O’Connor, instead of the clear language of the Constitution itself: "establish" which was clearly in the context of forbidding an “established” church or “Church of America” like the Church of England, not excluding Christianity from the public square—CMI]: 1) the act has a primarily secular purpose; 2) the primary effect of the act does not promote religion over nonreligion, or promote one religion over another or somehow serve as a government endorsement of religion; and 3) the act does not result in an excessive entanglement between church and state—last week’s ruling pertained to only the last two prongs of the Lemon test4.
Yet the stickers were found to be unconstitutional despite the judge’s ruling that they are also “fostering critical thinking” about evolution and serve “a clearly secular purpose” (with the judge agreeing that the Cobb County school district had secular, not religious, reasons for adopting the sticker). Some observers thus see this decision as another example of an “activist judge” who is grossly misinterpreting the “establishment-of-religion” clause in the Constitution.
Ham said he believes the battle in the public schools ultimately comes down to a spiritual and emotional issue, where there is no such thing as neutrality.
Ham concluded with the general observation that the Bible tells us there is no such thing as being neutral. (See Secular creation?) Luke 11:23 says a person is either for Christ or against Him. Thus the battle in America’s public schools is really a clash of worldviews—one explains life with God; and one, without God.
We will keep you posted on the progress of the appeal of the judge’s decision.
Gross, D. (Associated Press), Georgia evolution stickers ordered removed, news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050114/ap_on_re_us/evolution_stickers_13, January 13, 2005. Return to text. .
Torres, K., Cobb school board to appeal evolution ruling, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, www.ajc.com/hp/content/auto/epaper/editions/tuesday/news_14ce5b3b4491d02d0025.html, January 18, 2005. Return to text. .
Curtis, P., Georgia schools to remove creationist stickers from textbooks, Guardian Unlimited, education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1390632,00.html, January 14, 2005. Return to text. .
Cooper, S., Media backgrounder on Selman sticker case regarding evolution disclaimer in biology textbooks, Discovery Institute News press release, www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2293, November 8, 2004. Return to text. .
Discovery Institute News press release, Incompetent defense by Cobb County attorney may have caused school district loss, www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2387&program= CSC%20-%20Views%20and%20News&callingPage=discoMainPage, January 13, 2005. Return to text. .