Georgia Evolution Lawsuit Is a Fact

In Cobb County, outside Atlanta, teachers used to tear pages out of textbooks rather than wrangle with the divisive topic of evolution. Two years ago, the school board reached a more modern compromise: On the inside cover of a biology textbook, a sticker warns that “evolution is a theory, not a fact.”

That solution came under fire Monday in an Atlanta District Court, where a group of Cobb County parents backed by the American Civil Liberties Union has sued the school district, charging that it has mingled religion with science by using the sticker.

On the first of what is expected to be a four-day trial, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper heard from all sides: a parent who said she was outraged when she first saw the textbook; a Brown University cell biologist who co-wrote the textbook; and a school board member who described the exhausting process of reaching a compromise in a community with a large population of conservative Christians.

Cooper will weigh whether the sticker violates the 1st Amendment by endorsing religion or entangling religion with government.

Although similar disclaimers are used in school districts throughout the country, their constitutionality has never been tested in court, said Michael Manely, a plaintiff’s attorney representing the parents against Cobb County.

“It takes a tremendous amount of money and energy to try a case,” Manely said. “If there is a bright lining it is that the forces against science -- the folks that want to take us back to the dark ages -- tend to lose far more often.”

Seventy-nine years after John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution in a Tennessee classroom, the theory is still rejected by many Southerners.

It is the second time this year that Georgia has been the center of a controversy over the teaching of the subject. In January, state school superintendent Kathy Cox removed the word “evolution” from Georgia’s teaching standards, calling it a “buzzword that causes a lot of negative reaction.” Under waves of protest from scientist and teachers, Cox reversed her decision.

When the Cobb County School District distributed the biology textbook in 2002, parent Marjorie Rogers testified Monday that she was “stunned” by the tone of certainty in its passages about evolution.

“It presented it just blatantly. Evolution is a fact. It did happen. I was outraged,” said Rogers, a lawyer who believes in the Bible’s story of the origin of life. She collected 2,300 signatures on a petition demanding that the books “clearly distinguished theory from fact.”

The petition, and publicity that followed, brought the school board under enormous pressure, said board member Laura F. Searcy in testimony.

Searcy, a pediatric nurse practitioner, was infuriated a decade ago to discover that her children were not being taught evolution, which she described as “the basis of biological science in the 21st century.” That discovery -- where pages had been ripped out of her children’s textbooks -- contributed to her decision to run for the school board, she said.

Two years ago, when the biology textbook was introduced, the school board could not ignore the objections of “a large segment of the community,” Searcy said. After discussion, the board voted to print a disclaimer in nonreligious language that, its defenders say, encourages inquiry and critical thinking.

“I looked at it like you would an informed consent,” Searcy said. “You have a large population in your public school system that feels very strongly. The question is, can you be sensitive and tolerant to their very deep moral feelings?”

The disclaimer reads: “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.”

But the textbook’s co-author, Kenneth Miller, said the disclaimer used the word “theory” in a colloquial way that suggested it was “a guess, or a little hunch.” In science, theories are overarching explanations -- in evolution’s case, “widely supported by millions of facts,” he said. Moreover, it is misleading to single out evolution for scrutiny when all science should be approached with a spirit of inquiry, he said.

“There is nothing special about evolution,” said Miller, a biology professor at Brown University. “Evolution is as well grounded as our understanding of cell biology or human physiology.”

Some have compared this week’s trial to the 1925 Scopes “monkey trial,” which drew revered lawyers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow to a hot and crowded courthouse where scores of journalists came to watch the forces of fundamentalism and modern science square off.

That the argument has not been settled is exasperating to Diane Buckner, 59, a Cobb County book dealer who sat in on Monday’s testimony.

“It makes us look like yahoos to have a sticker like that on a textbook,” she said.