ATLANTA — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit today vacated a lower court decision that declared Cobb County science textbook stickers which stated “evolution is a theory, not a fact” unconstitutional. The court was critical of the district court for issuing its ruling against the stickers despite holes in the evidentiary record in the case and remanded the case back to the district court for new proceedings.
“No school should be in trouble for simply stating the facts. That’s what schools are supposed to do. Though we wish the appeals court would have ruled on the constitutional merits of the case without sending it back to the district court, we are pleased that the district court’s ruling against the school district has been vacated,” said Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster.
In its ruling today, the 11th Circuit wrote, “The problems presented by a record containing significant evidentiary gaps are compounded because at least some key findings of the district court are not supported by the evidence that is contained in the record.” The full text of the court’s ruling in the case
Selman v. Cobb County School District can be read at
www.telladf.org/UserDocs/CobbCountyDecision.pdf.
The lower court judge agreed that the stickers were not applied to the textbooks for a religious purpose and were devoid of religious content. Nonetheless, he deemed the stickers a violation of the so-called “separation of church and state” for the sole reason that many people were aware that Christians supported the stickers.
According to the friend-of-the-court brief ADF attorneys filed in the case, “The District Court’s analysis will lead to absurd results…. The Establishment Clause was never meant to prohibit the passage of a secular law, for a secular purpose, simply because Christians actively lobbied for the law” (
www.telladf.org/news/story.aspx?cid=3404).
The sticker which had been applied to each textbook read, “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.”
ADF is a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
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