it's not just unconstitutional, it's "breathtaking inanity"!

when i got to school today and checked my e-mail, i had three messages -- one from krista, one from paul r., and one from the pittsburgh ACLU office -- making sure that i knew the very very very fantastic news that the plaintiffs in the kitzmiller v. dover area school board case have won!

that's right -- the big case over whether high schools in dover, pa can issue a disclaimer about intelligent design as part of the biology curriculum has gone the way of the first amendment! no creationism in the classroom! i'm a happy girl about this. here are some excerpts from judge jones's opinion:

The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board's ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents. ...

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID. We will also issue a declaratory judgment that Plaintiffs' rights under the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been violated by Defendants' actions. Defendants' actions in violation of Plaintiffs' civil rights as guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 subject Defendants to liability with respect to injunctive and declaratory relief, but also for nominal damages and the reasonable value of Plaintiffs' attorneys' services and costs incurred in vindicating Plaintiffs' constitutional rights.

i haven't had a chance (and probably won't until this weekend) to read the full opinion, but based on having skimmed it, it looks like a 139-page piece of poetry! this is all very important in the crazy world of establishment clause jurisprudence. i'm very very proud right now, of the legal system, of the bill of rights, of all that is good and just in the world.

merry christmas, indeed!