Twelve Citizens for Science Groups were signatories on an amicus brief filed in support of a recent U.S. District Court decision, Selman v. Cobb County School District, which ruled that the evolution “warning labels” required in Cobb County, Georgia, public school textbooks were unconstitutional. The “friend of the court brief” was filed in the eleventh circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, in response to an appeal seeking to overturn the Selman decision. The groups that signed the brief were Georgia Citizens for Integrity in Science, Alabama Citizens for Science Education, Texas Citizens for Science, Colorado Citizens for Science, Kansas Citizens for Science, Nebraska Religious Coalition for Science Education, New Mexicans for Science and Reason, Michigan Citizens for Science, The Coalition for Excellence in Science and Math Education, Ohio Citizens for Science, Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education, and TonkaFocus. In 2002, responding to local creationist protests about the inclusion of evolution in textbooks, the Cobb County School Board mandated that every single biology textbook in the district carry a label describing evolution as “a theory, not a fact.” Represented by attorney Michael Manely and the Georgia ACLU, Jeffrey Selman and four other Cobb parents filed suit in federal court. The trial was held in the fall of 2004 in U.S. District Court, with Judge Clarence Cooper presiding. In a carefully reasoned decision issued in January 2005, Judge Cooper ruled that the evolution disclaimer was unconstitutional because it “convey[s] a message of endorsement of religion,” and ordered the stickers to be removed. But the school district decided to appeal the decision, prompting these Citizens for Science groups to weigh in.
The adoption of the sticker does not simply accommodate religion, as appellants would have it, but bends the core curriculum of public education to aid sectarian interests. The doctrine that a school board has the discretion to craft an individual accommodation to religious beliefs does not give it the latitude to tailor the education of all students to the preferences of a particular religious sect, as the district court held happened when Cobb County imposed the disclaimer sticker on all of its students.
(Citizens for Science Amicus Brief p 15)
The amicus brief submitted by these Citizens for Science groups was not alone. Amicus briefs supporting the Selman decision were also submitted by the National Science Teachers Association and the National Association of Biology Teachers; Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Anti-Defamation League, and the American Jewish Committee; the National Council of Jewish Women and The Interfaith Alliance; the Witherspoon Society and the Clergy and Laity Network; the American Jewish Congress; a coalition of grassroots pro-science organizations, including Georgia Citizens for Integrity in Science Education; and a coalition of fifty-six scientific organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
