Decision in Dover, PA case makes Kansas standards vulnerable, some say

Critics said Tuesday that recently adopted science standards for Kansas public schools are vulnerable to a legal challenge after a federal judge's ruling in Pennsylvania against intelligent design.

But those critics stopped short of predicting a federal lawsuit against Kansas' standards, which treat evolution as a flawed theory. They said elections next year could change the state Board of Education and cause it to reconsider the standards.

"Then our state can save an immense amount of money in defending what is clearly unconstitutional and failed practices and policy," said Pedro Irigonegaray, a Topeka attorney representing educators and scientists who wanted standards reflecting mainstream scientific views that evolution is well-established.

In Pennsylvania, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that the Dover Area School Board violated the Constitution last year when it required the biology curriculum to include intelligent design, which says an unspecified intelligent cause is the best way to explain some complex and orderly features of the natural world. Jones said the policy impermissibly promoted religious beliefs. The judge called intelligent design "an old religious argument for the existence of God."

.......

"It was an effort to include intelligent design and treat it as science, disparaging evolution along the way," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in an interview from his Washington office. "That will not stand."


http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KS_EVOLUTION_KANSAS_REAX_KSOL-?SITE=VARIT&SECTION=US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-12-21-01-07-37

Since we are only hearing about the FISA "liberal" judge who resigned, this person in PA must be RW?