Cobb County to Appeal Evolution Ruling

Welcome news from Cobb County, Georgia:

As if taking a federal judge's ruling against them as fighting words, the Cobb County school board voted Monday to appeal a court order to remove evolution disclaimers from textbooks.

In a 4-2 vote, board members said U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper's decision "amounts to unnecessary judicial intrusion into local control of schools," according to a statement they released immediately after the vote.

(Hmmmm...do I detect a little cynicism in the Atlanta Urinal-Constipation's opening sentence?)

At issue is a sticker placed inside the front covers of high school biology textbooks. The sticker reads:

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.

A federal judge, who is evidently not too fond of critical consideration and open-mindedness, ruled that the sticker violated the First Amendment's establishment clause, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.

Specifically, the district court judge applied the so-called Lemon test (from Lemon v. Kurtzman), which says that “…a government-sponsored message violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment if 1) it does not have a secular purpose, 2) its principal or primary effect advances or inhibits religion, or 3) it creates an excessive entanglement of the government with religion.”

Justice Scalia had this to say about the Lemon test in Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District :

"As to the Court's invocation of the Lemon test: Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys of Center Moriches Union Free School District. Its most recent burial, only last Term, was, to be sure, not fully six feet under: Our decision in Lee v. Weisman conspicuously avoided using the supposed "test" but also declined the invitation to repudiate it. Over the years, however, no fewer than five of the currently sitting Justices have, in their own opinions, personally driven pencils through the creature's heart (the author of today's opinion repeatedly), and a sixth has joined an opinion doing so.

You gotta love Nino. In his opinion on the same case, he writes:

The secret of the Lemon test's survival, I think, is that it is so easy to kill. It is there to scare us (and our audience) when we wish it to do so, but we can command it to return to the tomb at will. Such a docile and useful monster is worth keeping around, at least in a somnolent state; one never knows when one might need him.