Religious Fundamentalists Dealt Court Blow

Barbara Vobejda - 1 May 1988

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruling striking down Louisiana’s creationism law signals trouble for fundamentalist parents in Alabama who have challenged public school textbooks on religious grounds, attorneys and educators are saying.

At the same time, educators predicted that Friday’s opinion — declaring unconstitutional a law requiring that creationism be taught whenever evolution is part of the curriculum — will lead textbook publishers to devote more thorough treatment to evolution, which often has been “watered down” in school curriculum.

“It’s certainly not an encouraging decision,” said Robert Skolrood, executive director of the National Legal Foundation, which has lent legal assistance in the federal lawsuit filed by 600 Mobile County parents. “I don’t like what I see.”

“Our side thinks it’s a very good decision,” said opposing attorney William Bradford, who represented a group of parents intervening on behalf of the Alabama Board of Education. “The case strongly reaffirms the constitutional principle that the state can teach secular ideas, even if those ideas happen to conflict with the tenets of some religions.”

In the Alabama case, the parents challenged more than 40 textbooks on grounds that they unconstitutionally promoted the “religion” of secular humanism. A federal judge’s ruling supporting their arguments is being appealed.

In Alabama, said Bradford, the parents “are offended … because the ideas conflict with their religious beliefs. They want to tailor the public school curriculum … the court said that’s not right.”

The Supreme Court’s 7-2 ruling Friday said the Louisiana law was motivated by religious considerations and unconstitutionally promoted the religious belief “that a supernatural being created humankind.”

The law, according to the court, “does not serve to protect academic freedom, but has the distinctly different purpose of discrediting evolution by counterbalancing its teaching at every tum with the teaching of creation science…”

The ruling — which comes after years of pressure from the religious right for public schools to alter curriculum and textbooks — was widely seen as a strike against the efforts by religious conservatives.

“A case like this is a way of checking the far right’s movement into the classroom,” said Virginia Roach, a research associate with the National Association of State Boards of Education. “Hopefully this will stem the tide.”

Bill G. Aldridge, executive director of National Science Teachers Association, said the decision will also affect textbook content.

“We’re much more likely to see the publishers get more courageous about putting legitimate information about evolution in books,” he said. The desire of publishers to secure a national market for textbooks has led them to avoid evolution and other controversial topics, he added.

Herbert R. Adams, president of Laidlaw Educational Publishers, agreed. “It takes the pressure off those publishers that were concerned about the controversy,” he said. “Some were holding out to see how the court would rule. Now the road is clear, and the controversy is clear, and most books will go heavier into evolution, which is a good thing.”

Most attorneys said the decision carries fewer implications for a federal lawsuit filed by conservative Christian parents in Tennessee, who charged that public school textbooks offended their religious beliefs. In that case, a federal judge ruled that a group of children may be excused from reading class to avoid books their parents say promote “anti-Christian” themes, including feminism.