This morning’s breaking news is that a Federal judge in Pennsylvania has ruled against the Dover School District, saying that intelligent design in the biology classroom is unconstitutional.
The full 139-page ruling can be downloaded from here, and I’d suggest you keep an eye on Mike Argento, a York Daily Record columnist who blogged the Hell out of the Dover Panda Trial.
Update: Not sure if this is the Associated Press story or directly from York Daily Record, but the judge ruled “that the mention of intelligent design in Dover Area School District’s ninth-grade biology class is unconstitutional because it amounts to establishing religion in public schools.”
Update: This appears to be the AP piece. Money quote from the judge’s ruling: “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.”
Update: Some choice quotes pulled from the end of the judge’s 139-page ruling follow.
On intelligent design as science: “In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.”
On judicial activism: “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.”
The judge is enjoining the district “from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID.”
In addition, the judge ruled that the violation of the plaintiffs’ civil rights by violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment “subject Defendants to liability with respect to injunctive and declaratory relief, but also for nominal damages and the reasonable value of Plaintiffs’ attorneys’ services and costs incurred in vindicating Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”
Update: An expanded AP piece and a Philadelphia Inquirer piece are now available. According to the latter, the ACLU (which has a page on the ID lawsuit) has scheduled a news conference for 1:30 PM in Harrisburg.
Update: Mike Argento calls the judge “an American hero.”
Update: In one sense, I suspect that the ruling is as long, detailed, and comprehensive as it is in order for Judge Jones to give himself the cover necessary for just how sweeping and blunt he is in the end.
This appears to be as complete a rebuke of the entire fiasco as one could possibly expect from him (or from any judge, really), and it reads at times as if Jones is, well, sort of offended at the waste of the people’s time, energy, and money.
Update: Also, the ACLU of Pennsylvania is covering the news on their blog.
Update: “I also hope that people will take the time to read this decision,” said plaintiff Tammy Kitzmiller at today’s ACLU of Pennsylvania press conference.