PandasThumb.org: McCreary Ruling Raises the Bar for Creationism/ID

[BurtWorm]

McCreary Ruling Good News for Science Education
Posted by Ed Brayton on June 27, 2005 12:11 PM

After reading the majority opinion in the McCreary case, involving the posting of the Ten Commandments in a county courthouse, I am convinced that the ruling is extremely good news for those of us who are active in fighting the attempts of creationists (in whatever form) to weaken science education in public schools. But in order to understand why, some background is required. We've been waiting with great anticipation for this decision because it would involve the Lemon test, the set of criteria that the court has used (sometimes) for the last 35 years or so to determine whether a policy violates the Establishment Clause. The Lemon test has three prongs - purpose, effect and entanglement. In order to meet the test, a policy must have a clear secular purpose, have the effect of neither advancing not inhibiting religion, and must not unnecessarily entangle church and state.

In the battle against creationism in science classrooms, the purpose prong is very important because those who advocate putting creationism into classrooms invariably make pronouncements of religious intent. In the Dover case, for instance, the school board member who proposed putting "intelligent design" into science classrooms announced he was doing so because "someone died on a cross 2000 years ago" and it was time for someone to "take a stand for Him." But in the course of the last few years, there have been many voices on the court for either modifying or even doing away with the Lemon test, particularly the purpose prong, and many of us feared that the McCreary case might be used to renounce the test, in part or in whole. The appellants in McCreary specifically asked the court to do away with the purpose prong, arguing that it was nebulous and impossible to truly understand the purpose of a person or governing body.

That would have been a serious blow to the legal strategy in the Dover case as well as potential future cases and would have deprived our side of a major legal rationale in our favor. Alas, our fears were for nought. Not only did the majority of the court not accept the arguments of the county's attorneys, the majority opinion, written by Justice Souter, explicitly and resoundingly reasserts the validity of the purpose prong and its importance in adjudicating Establishment Clause cases...