Court Ruling Rips ‘Evolution as Theory’ Stickers from Science Texts

Jim Brown

January 13, 2005

AgapePress

A Christian attorney says a federal judge has joined the ACLU in its crusade against critical thinking by ruling that a suburban Atlanta school district must remove an evolution disclaimer from science books.

On Thursday (January 13), U.S. District Court Judge Clarence Cooper ordered the Cobb County Board of Education must remove from inside the textbooks a sticker that says ‘Evolution is a theory not a fact, regarding the origin of living things.’ Continuing, the sticker admonished students that the material ‘should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.’

Evidently the caveats did nothing to dissuade Judge Cooper, who said the stickers violate the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Parents and the American Civil Liberties Union had challenged the stickers in court, arguing they violated the ‘separation of church and state’ — and Cooper agreed.

But Brian Fahling, an attorney with a Mississippi-based pro-family organization, says the stickers do not constitute a violation of the Establishment Clause.

‘I think it’s absolutely beyond the pale that we live in a nation where the fact that maybe people who had religious beliefs [and] wanted to encourage their students to think with an open mind is somehow now a violation of the Establishment Clause,’ says Fahling. ‘It just makes one unable to comprehend how the judge got there — other than ultimately a hostility, I think, to religion.’

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