"Viewpoint Discrimination" and the California Creationism Case.
Over the last few days, I [reposted](http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2007/08/the_consequences_of_creationis.php) [a series](http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2007/08/more_on_the_california_creatio.php) [of four](http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2007/08/still_more_on_the_california_c.php) [articles](http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2007/08/california_the_saga_continues.php) that I wrote two years ago. Those articles discuss a California lawsuit filed by a group of Christian schools against the University of California. They are suing in an attempt to force UC to recognize some of their classes as meeting the requirements that UC sets for high school students who are applying for admission to the system. Several subjects are involved in the suit, but as a biologist I'm mostly interested in the biology courses that are involved.
At the moment, the next scheduled event in the case comes on September 24th, when the judge will hear arguments on motions for summary judgement. I'm not a legal expert, and I don't spend as much time following Constitutional Law for fun as [Ed](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/) does, but I've got a feeling that the motion for summary judgement filed by the Christian schools will fail, and the case will go to trial. A motion for [summary judgement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary_judgement) can only be granted if there are no significant disputes about material facts in the case. In this particular case, at least as far as the science books are concerned, there is a significant dispute about the facts.
The plaintiffs (the Christian schools) claim that their courses, "add to standard content a banned book, a religious viewpoint that God created man and woman, or the viewpoint of creation or Intelligent Design," and that this constitutes "viewpoint discrimination." ([Brief for Summary Judgement](http://www.acsi.org/webfiles/webitems/attachments/007875_5.%20Plaintiffs%27%20Brief%20for%20Summary%20Judgment%208-07.pdf) p. 20). Someone from the Association of Christian Schools International, one of the plaintiffs in the case, left [a comment](http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2007/08/the_consequences_of_creationis.php#comment-550901) on a couple of the old articles that elaborated a bit on that - the case, he claimed, is not about creationism, it's about "illegal viewpoint discrimination.
[Read more (at The Questionable Authority, where comments can be left):](http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2007/09/viewpoint_discrimination_and_t.php)