Dec. 20 (Bloomberg) -- A Pennsylvania school district cannot require the teaching of intelligent design in high school biology classes, a federal judge ruled in a case that may influence other challenges to the theory of evolution.
U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, ruled today that the Dover, Pennsylvania school board can't force the teaching of intelligent design, a theory that claims that the universe is too complex to have developed randomly and must have been designed by a superior power. The board in October 2004 ordered that intelligent design be introduced alongside the theory that life evolved by natural selection.
``To preserve the separation of church and state'' mandated by the First Amendment, the Dover Area School District is barred from maintaining the ID policy in any school, Jones wrote. ``The students, parents and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.''
The six-week trial drew national attention as the first over the merits of intelligent design. Religious conservatives have proposed introducing the theory in other school districts, a move critics claim would violate a 200-year-old ``wall of separation'' between church and state.
``Since it's the first such ruling, if you are a school board lawyer and your job is to keep your school board out of trouble, you will be paying attention to what the district court says in Pennsylvania,'' said Brian Landsberg, constitutional law professor at University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, Sacramento, California.
An Appeal
The ruling can be challenged at a federal appeals court in Philadelphia and then to the U.S. Supreme Court. For now, its legal effect is limited to Dover school board. It is not a binding precedent on other school districts.
In his opinion, Jones said the key issue is ``whether Intelligent Design is science,'' and said, ``we have concluded that it is not.''
Jones said the concept of Intelligent Design, ``cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.''
The ruling ``has potential impact'' across the country because ``it's a piece of ammunition that will be used'' by the winning party, Landsberg said.
Dover voters ousted eight of the nine school-board members who backed the plan in November. The ninth wasn't up for re- election. The vote came the same day the Kansas school board adopted statewide science standards casting doubt on evolution.
Eight Dover families filed the federal lawsuit last December, accusing the board of threatening to fire science teachers who refused to give creationism equal weight with evolution.
``Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross,'' the board's leading proponent of intelligent design said during a discussion of the issue, according to the suit. ``Can't someone take a stand for him?''
In September, six Nobel laureates joined about 200 scientific and religious leaders in urging all 50 U.S. state governors to insist that schools teach evolution and oppose religiously inspired alternatives. Intelligent-design classes might harm the U.S.'s economic competitiveness by weakening the teaching of biology and genetics, they said.
The Origins
The phrase ``intelligent design'' was first widely used in ``Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins,'' a textbook the Dover district is using as a reference book in the high school's library.
Georgetown University theology Professor John Haught testified during the trial that intelligent design is similar to creationism and should be taught as religion and not science. Religiously-motivated foes of Darwin's theory have promoted intelligent design for the past 15 years, according to the suit. They are led by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which describes itself as a nonpartisan think tank.
The case is: Kitzmiller et al v. Dover Area School District, 04cv2688, U.S. District Court Middle District of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg).