Federal appeals court judges in Georgia gave a hostile reception Thursday to a lower court decision that ordered Cobb County to scrape off evolution disclaimer stickers from almost 35,000 science textbooks.
Judge Ed Carnes, who dominated the questioning, said the three-sentence disclaimer seemed to him to be “literally accurate.”
Carnes told the lawyer representing parents who filed suit against the stickers that since the US Supreme Court has previously referred to evolution as a theory that “I don’t think y’all can contest any of the sentences.”
Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper found that the stickers, which say evolution is a “theory, not a fact,” improperly endorsed religion.
In a 44-page decision released in January, Cooper agreed. He acknowledged that the disclaimers had a secular purpose, and avoided religious reference. But, he continued, “the sticker communicates to those who oppose evolution for religious reasons that they are favored members of the political community, while the sticker sends a message to those who believe in evolution that they are political outsiders.”
The Cobb school board adopted the 33-word stickers on March 28, 2002, amid a storm of protest from parents who disagreed with a new science curriculum that allowed evolution instruction. Since 1995, the board had curtailed the teaching of evolution, leading some teachers to rip sections on evolution from science textbooks.
The disclaimers were placed inside the front pages of Cobb science textbooks in the fall of 2002. The stickers read: “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.”
A recent Washington Post profile of Cobb County traced its evolution from an ultra-conservative backwater into a 650,000 Metro Atlanta suburb where there people actually raise questions about governments that require warning stickers on science textbooks that contain science and laws requiring citizens to own a gun.
Of course, this is the county infamous as a key location in the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and where Leo Frank was lynched in 1915; it was also ground zero for the Newt Gingrich’s “Republican Revolution” of 1994. Cobb is certainly one of the most “liberal unfriendly” places in the USA, as I know from teaching high school in next door Fulton County.
Cobb County schools have not yet required that U.S. history textbooks carry a disclaimer sticker that reads: “This textbook contains material on democracy. Democracy is used as synonym for capitalism in this book and the material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”
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