California School District Agrees To Drop Creationism Course

[Henk Elegeert]

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California School District Agrees To Drop Creationism Course, Settle Lawsuit
Tuesday, January 17, 2006

El Tejon School Officials Agree Not To Offer Controversial Class Again

Americans United for Separation of Church and State today announced that
it has settled a lawsuit over a California school district’s decision to
teach a course promoting creationism.

Americans United, with assistance from the law firm Arnold & Porter LLP,
filed suit against the El Tejon Unified School Districtlast week,
seeking to end a course called “Philosophy of Design” that promoted
creationist ideas, including “intelligent design.” The course, taught at
Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec by special education teacher and
soccer coach Sharon Lemburg, relied heavily on videos produced by
fundamentalist Christian groups that espouse creationism.

Under the terms of the settlement, the course will terminate one week
early. The district’s board of trustees has also agreed to language
stating, “No school over which the School District has authority,
including the High School, shall offer, presently or in the future, the
course entitled ‘Philosophy of Design’ or ‘Philosophy of Intelligent
Design’ or any other course that promotes or endorses creationism,
creation science, or intelligent design.”

Said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director,“We are
delighted with the board’s decision to discontinue the ‘Philosophy of
Design’ course and never offer it again. Public schools have no business
promoting religion. I hope that other public schools learn from this
incident and reject efforts to bring religious doctrines into classrooms.”

Americans United represented local parents who opposed the course for
its promotion of religious concepts. Although a lawsuit was filed in
federal court, attorneys with Americans United continued to dialogue
with school board attorneys, hoping to settle the matter out of court.

“This course was far from intelligently designed,” said Americans United
Legal Director Ayesha N. Khan. “It was an infomercial for creationism
and its offshoot, intelligent design. The class would never have
survived a court challenge, and the board of trustees made the right
call by pulling the plug on it.”

On Dec. 20, Americans United and the Pennsylvania ACLU won a decisive
victory over “intelligent design” advocates in a case from Dover, Pa. In
that legal action, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that
intelligent design is not science and ordered it removed from the Dover
schools.

The El Tejon case, AU maintained, was even more problematic because it
relied heavily on “young-earth” creationist materials that insist that
the biblical Book of Genesis is literally true and is scientific a
controversial view held by many fundamentalists but rejected by other
Christians. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the teaching of
creationism in public schools in 1987.

By permitting the course, the El Tejon District was elevating the
fundamentalistChristian viewpointover others and misrepresenting
religious concepts as scientific, Americans United asserted in legal
documents.

Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in
Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans
about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding
religious freedom.
"

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