TX Creation/Evolution Lawsuit Dismissed

On Tuesday, March 31st, a federal judge dismissed Chris Comer's wrongful termination lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency, in which she alleged that the Agency's officially neutral stance on evolution issues was unconstitutional...

It all started back in 2007. Barbara Forrest, a key witness in the Dover, PA Intelligent Design trial was coming to Austin, to promote a new book, "Creationism's Trojan Horse."

The book details Forrest's testimony at the Dover trial and her analysis of subpoena'd manuscripts and page proofs of the Intelligent Design textbook "Of Pandas and People." She convincingly proved that "intelligent design" was edited into drafts of the text in place of "scientific creationism" less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "scientific creationism" could not be taught in public schools. The judge relied on this evidence when he ruled that Intelligent Design had a religious basis.

Chris Comer, then the head of Science Curriculum for the Texas Education Agency, forwarded (with no comment save the letters "FYI") an announcement of Forrest's lecture to two e-mail lists of science educators.

Because of bad blood between the Texas Education Agency and the State Board of Education back in the 1990s, the Agency has a policy that employees must publicly remain neutral about any issue that may appear before the Board. News of Comer's e-mail caught the attention of some honchos at the Agency, who swiftly forced Comer to resign in November of 2007, alleging that she'd been warned before about such things and that forwarding the notice from her official agency e-mail account implied agency endorsement of Forrest's message.

In a lawsuit filed in July of 2008, Comer alleged that such "neutrality" about creationism implies an endorsement of teaching creationism in the public schools. As that is unconstitutional, the lawsuit reasoned that Comer's firing was therefore also unconstitutional.

None of this convinced Federal Judge Lee Yeakel, who dismissed the case without comment or explanation at 10:31 am yesterday. You can download the arguments made by attorneys on each side in the Dec. 17 court hearing transcript.