Court Issues Troubling Decision In Dover Intelligent Design Case
Wed, Dec 21, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI — Today the district court judge issued a lengthy opinion in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case, holding that the School District violated the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution by reading to students of a ninth-grade biology class a short, one-minute statement that mentions “intelligent design” twice. Pursuant to this statement, the book Of Pandas and People, which addresses intelligent design arguments, was placed in the school district library for students to voluntarily review, along with other books that are critical of intelligent design. This statement was read in a class in which Darwin’s theory of evolution was taught pursuant to the Pennsylvania academic standards and pursuant to its standing in the scientific community. Moreover, the primary and only required text for this class, Biology by Prentice Hall, fully and comprehensively covers the theory of evolution, and it was co-authored by one of the experts who testified for the Plaintiffs. According to the judge’s opinion, this “policy” violates the Establishment Clause, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel for the Law Center, commented, “What is clear from this decision is that our present Establishment Clause jurisprudence, as several Supreme Court justices have noted, is in hopeless disarray and in need of substantial revision. In his opinion the judge bemoaned that the school district ‘deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.’ In this respect, he was correct. This case should have never made it into a federal courthouse. The Founders of this country would be astonished at the thought that this simple curriculum change ‘established religion’ in violation of the Constitution that they drafted.”

Several Supreme Court justices have openly criticized the way in which this body of constitutional law has developed. For example, Justice Thomas stated in his concurring opinion in the pledge of allegiance case, “Our jurisprudential confusion has led to results that can only be described as silly.” In Edwards v. Aguillard, a case relied upon by the district court in which the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional to teach creationism alongside evolution, Justice Scalia criticized the Court’s “embarrassing Establishment Clause jurisprudence.” In a school prayer case, then Justice Rehnquist noted, “It is impossible to build sound constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of constitutional history, but unfortunately the Establishment Clause has been expressly freighted with Jefferson’s misleading metaphor for nearly 40 years.” Justice Rehnquist is referring to the metaphor of the wall of separation between church and state.

Thompson continued, “The district court’s decision today continues along this path of applying a fundamentally flawed jurisprudence. Unfortunately, until the Supreme Court adopts a more coherent and historically sound jurisprudence, school districts like Dover will be at risk of costly lawsuits by the ACLU for adopting such modest curriculum changes such as the one at issue.”

Ninth Circuit Appellate Court asked to Reconsider its Ruling that it is OK For Public Schools To Teach Seventh Graders “To Become Muslims”
Mon, Dec 19, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI. – A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which had ruled in a short unpublished memorandum opinion that it was constitutionally permissible for twelve-year-old public school students to be told they would “become Muslims,” has been asked to reconsider its decision by the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Law Center has also asked all twenty-four active judges on the Ninth Circuit to decide the case.

For three weeks in 2001, impressionable twelve-year-old students were told that they would become Muslims, memorized verses from the Koran, took Islamic names, wore identification tags that displayed their new Islamic name and the Star and Crescent Moon, which is the symbol of Muslims, were handed materials that instructed them to “Remember Allah always so that you may prosper,” completed the Islamic Five Pillars of Faith, including fasting, and memorized and recited the “Bismillah” or “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Praise be to God,” which students also wrote on banners that were hung on the classroom walls.

Richard Thompson, Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented, “This ruling is evidence of a double-standard when it comes to religion in public schools. If students had been instructed on Christianity, as they had on Islam, a Constitutional violation would have most likely been found. The appeals court should clarify in a published opinion just how far public schools can go in teaching about religion. Christians want to know.”

The Law Center represents several parents and their children who challenged the California Byron Union School District’s practice of teaching twelve-year-old students “to become Muslims.”

A federal district court judge in San Francisco had previously determined that the school district had not violated the constitution. Edward L. White III, a Law Center attorney, had asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ three-judge panel to overturn the district court’s decision.

The three-judge panel, however, affirmed the ruling of the district court in a short unpublished memorandum decision. In its unpublished decision, the three-judge panel overlooked, and did not rule on, the plaintiffs’ claims that their free exercise of religion rights and their parental rights had been violated.

The Law Center has asked the three-judge panel to reconsider its ruling and to rule on the free exercise and parental rights claims.

Thomas More Law Center Challenges New Jersey District's Total Ban on Christmas Music In Federal Appellate Court
Thu, Dec 15, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI — The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has filed its opening brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, challenging the constitutionality of a New Jersey school district’s policy that banned all religious music in the district’s public schools. The School District’s ban was specifically focused on preventing the playing of Christmas music, including simple instrumentals, during the 2004 year-end celebrations in its public schools.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center, commented, “This blatant anti-religious policy is yet another example of the total and militant hostility that many public schools exhibit towards the celebration of Christmas. The Grinch is alive and well in New Jersey.”

The brief was filed on behalf of Michael Stratechuk, who sued on his own and on behalf of his two children, who are students in the New Jersey School District. According to the brief, the school district’s ban on religious music conveys the impermissible, government-sponsored message of disapproval of and hostility toward religion in violation of the Establishment Clause, and it deprives the Stratechuk children the right to receive information and ideas, an inherent corollary of their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and academic freedom.

Robert Muise, the attorney handling the case for the Law Center, noted in the brief: “Christmas is a national holiday, and religious music in the public schools is one of the rich traditions of this season. Those that are hostile to these traditions hide behind the mantle of ‘tolerance,’ only to promote intolerance. Indeed, we learn to understand and respect traditions, customs, and beliefs not by being offended or threatened by the traditions of others, but by understanding the meaning of such traditions and why they have the capacity to inspire.”

The New Jersey School District policy at issue in this case was recently featured in a book, The War On Christmas, by Fox News anchor, John Gibson.

 
Persistent Reverend; Wellington OKs Nativity Display
Wed, Dec 14, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI. – For the last four years during the Christmas season, the Village of Wellington, Florida has displayed a menorah but no nativity. Undaunted by the failure of Wellington officials to take up his written request for a nativity display last year, Reverend Tim Bumgardner of the Palm Beach Worship Center again made his request, this time with the help of the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The Reverend’s persistence paid off. Although Village officials had initially indicated there would be no nativity added to the menorah this year, but would take up the issue in 2006, the Reverend’s appearance on the O’Reilly Factor brought national attention to Wellington.

On Tuesday, December 13th, the Village Council unanimously voted to include a nativity alongside the menorah. More than 200 residents, most in favor of the nativity, packed the community center. They heard the Reverend’s message of inclusion, “Scrooges (ACLU) are trying to steal Christmas from our nation and community,” he said. “Leave up the menorah, recognize our wonderful Jewish community…. but put up the nativity. It is Christmastime in America."

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center commented, “In many communities across America, officials feel that if they are going to put up any religious display celebrating the holiday season, they are legally compelled to put up either a nativity display or a menorah display, but not both. The primary reason for this confusion is a series of incoherent Supreme Court cases dealing with religious displays which have the unfortunate effect of pitting one religion against another.”

Law Center trial counsel Edward L. White III spoke to the Village attorney and sent a letter to Village officials requesting, that they either add a nativity scene to their display of a menorah and evergreen tree or permit Rev. Bumgardner, himself, to place a nativity next to the menorah and tree. Mr. White explained that the menorah is a religious symbol and is the principal symbol of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. The evergreen tree, however, is a secular symbol and is not the principal symbol of the Christian holiday of Christmas.

Mr. White explained that the nativity scene is the principal symbol of Christmas and it must be added next to the menorah and tree so that the Christian faith is properly represented in the Village’s display. Mr. White concluded by noting that the absence of the nativity scene from the Village’s display demonstrated hostility toward Christians, which the United States Constitution forbids.

At Tuesday’s Village Council meeting, Thomas More Law Center affiliate attorney Dina Cellini and Rev. Bumgardner advanced these arguments when they addressed the Village Council.

Beaver Borough, Pennsylvania OK's Nativity Display; Thomas More Law Center Instrumental
Wed, Dec 14, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI. – Through the efforts of the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Deborah and Michael Sturm will finally get to erect a nativity scene display on public property.

On Tuesday, December 13th, Law Center trial counsel Edward L. White III accompanied the Strums to the Beaver Borough Council meeting in Pennsylvania. In November, Mr. White had written to the Borough Council to request that the Council grant the Strums permission to erect a nativity scene in a public park in the Borough. The request was placed on the Borough Council’s agenda for the December 13th meeting.

During last night’s meeting, White made a presentation with the Sturms to the Council and answered Council questions dealing with the legality and specifics of the display. After much discussion, the Council voted 7-2 in favor of the Sturms’ request.

White indicated that the nativity display will go up this Saturday. Ironically, that is the same day on which citizens will protest against Beaver County for not allowing any nativity displays outside the County courthouse. The Courthouse is across the street from the park where the Sturms are putting up their nativity. The Sturms will be speaking at the protest and those at the protest will be invited to cross the street and visit their nativity scene in the Borough park.
 
White commented, “December 13th was a great night for our clients and for the public recognition that Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ.”

 
Thomas More Law Center Defends Nativity Scene Display Requests In Florida and Pennsylvania
Mon, Dec 12, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI – Attorneys with the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will attend town council meetings in the Village of Wellington, Florida, and the Borough of Beaver, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, December 13, 2005, to request that their clients be permitted to erect nativity scenes on public property.

In Wellington, the Law Center represents the Reverend Tim Bumgardner of the Palm Beach Worship Center. The Law Center has requested that Wellington officials approve the Reverend’s request for officials to erect a nativity scene next to a menorah and a lit evergreen tree that appear outside the Village’s Community Center or, in the alternative, to permit the Reverend Bumgardner to erect a nativity scene on that same public property. Attending the meeting with Reverend Bumgardner will be Thomas More Law Center affiliate attorney, Dina Cellini. Reverend Bumgardner recently appeared on the O’Reilly Factor to discuss the lack of a nativity scene in Wellington.

On the same date, Law Center trial attorney Edward L. White III will attend the Borough of Beaver Council meeting with client Deborah Sturm. Mrs. Sturm has requested to display a nativity scene in a public park, and the Borough Council will decide the matter at its December 13th meeting. Assisting in the representation of Mrs. Sturm is Thomas More Law Center affiliate attorney Noah Fardo of Pittsburgh.

The Law Center has been defending the right to publicly display nativity scenes throughout the nation. This past November 2005, Law Center attorney Edward L. White III successfully represented the Samona family of Novi, Michigan, who had been threatened with fines if they did not remove the nativity scene from the front yard of their private home. The management company of their subdivision backed down and the nativity scene remained.

In 2003, the Law Center sued the Town of Palm Beach, Florida, for its refusal to respond to repeated requests of citizens to display nativity scenes alongside town-sanctioned menorahs. The federal district court judge in that case acknowledged the importance of recognizing religious holidays and ordered Palm Beach to treat all religious symbols equally.

In 2004, the Law Center sued the Town of Bay Harbor Islands, Florida, for denying a citizen the right to display a nativity scene next to a menorah in a public forum. The federal district court judge in that case granted the citizen the right to display her nativity scene during the Christmas season.

The Law Center also is currently challenging the policy of a New Jersey school district that banned all religious music, including instrumentals, from public schools in the district.

And, the Law Center continues to press its 2002 case against the New York City public school system whose written policy permits students to display the Jewish menorah and Islamic star and crescent in school, but specifically prohibits students from displaying Christian nativity scenes.

Front-Page of Sunday's Detroit News - Thomas More Cases Range From Defending Intelligent Design to Opposing Same-Sex Marriage
Sun, Dec 4, 2005

By Kim Kozlowski

ANN ARBOR-- Richard Thompson is confident the day will come when the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.

As head of a law firm touting itself as Christianity's answer to the American Civil Liberties Union, Thompson would gladly litigate a case that could give the nation's highest court an opportunity to further restrict or even reverse the case that legalized abortion. This is because the Thomas More Law Center, which Thompson co-founded in 1999 with Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, sees its mission as protecting life at conception, religious freedoms and family values, one case at a time.

The law center was recently thrust into the limelight with the nationally watched case challenging intelligent design, a controversial theory that explains life as being so complex that it could have been created only by an intelligent being.

But the five attorneys in the firm's Ann Arbor office -- along with 403 volunteer lawyers in other states -- are working on 200 cases in 40 states on issues ranging from keeping Christian symbols on public property to protecting the speech of anti-abortion activists to challenging the gay community.

The law firm, among a handful in the country working exclusively on Christian causes, seeks to change American culture that it believes has been shaped by liberal organizations.

"If we succeed in those issues, we will succeed in returning to our culture established by our Founding Fathers," said Thompson, 68, president and chief counsel of the firm and the former Oakland County prosecutor who tried to stop Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who has claimed to have helped more than 130 people commit suicide.
The law firm's work is getting attention.

Just last week, it represented the Novi family that prevailed over a neighborhood association to keep a nativity scene in their front yard.

Critics such as the ACLU say the Thomas More Law Center is advocating the dominance of one religion in this country.

"We are seeking to enforce the Constitution, the Bill of Rights," said Kary Moss, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan. "They are trying to rewrite it. The founders of this country wrote the First Amendment to get away from religious tyranny and to ensure this culture had a fertile soil for multiple religions to grow. That's not what the Thomas More Law Center wants."

Still others are concerned about how it uses its legal muscle to chip away at Roe v. Wade.

The Thomas More Law Center recently reviewed ballot language proposed by Citizens for Life, an anti-abortion Lansing group, which seeks to amend Michigan's Constitution and define life as beginning at conception in hopes of paving the way to making abortion illegal in Michigan.

The Michigan Board of Canvassers is scheduled to consider the language Wednesday. If approved, the group said it hopes to get the measure on the ballot and passed as soon as possible.
 
In South Dakota, the More center helped write a bill that was nearly passed last yearthat would have banned abortions in that state. Observers thought the intent was to force litigation on women's constitutional right to have an abortion, perhaps as far as the U.S. Supreme Court.

Planned Parenthood's Kate Looby says fighting efforts like those waged by the center are frustrating.

"I'd like to spend my time preventing unplanned pregnancies and taking care of children here right now that need our love and energy," said Looby, South Dakota state director for Planned Parenthood Minnesota/North Dakota/South Dakota. "It's very frustrating to us on the front lines of this culture war."

But others say it's about time someone is working in the judicial system to fight for Christian interests.

His organization "relies on the Thomas More Law Center as a faithful and extremely effective ally in promoting and defending the traditional family values shared by most Americans," said Gary Glenn, president of American Family Association of Michigan, an organization best known for fighting gay rights.

Roots in Election Loss

The Thomas More Law Center was founded after Thompson lost his elected seat as Oakland County prosecutor in the wake of trying to prosecute Kevorkian. Soon after, he and Monaghan, a devout Catholic, were talking about the country's political climate and how culture wars were being waged and won in the courts.

Monaghan put up the $500,000 to start the law firm, named after the Catholic patron saint of lawyers. He increased its funding annually through mid-2004. Now, the $2.3 million public interest law firm is funded exclusively by 50,000 individuals with $25 annual memberships and other benefactors. "They are an excellent organization, and one that is an avid defender of the Christian faith and religious expression and exercise as it relates to the Christian faith," said Jared Leland of the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, a Washington, D.C., law firm working on behalf of all faiths.

The More center received considerable attention recently during the 40-day trial defending the decision of a school board in Dover, Pa., to require science teachers to tell students about holes in Darwin's theory of evolution and about the theory of intelligent design.

The latter is backed by some scientists, as well as President Bush and Pope Benedict XVI. But most scientists and others oppose it, arguing that intelligent design is creationism in disguise.

Bernadette Reinking, a new Dover school board member opposed to teaching intelligent design in science classes, bristled at the interference.

"We felt there was an outside interest trying to control what was happening in Dover," Reinking said.

The school board members who supported the policy were voted out of office in the election last month, so it is unclear where the lawsuit may be headed. The judge hasn't rendered a decision, and the new board could reverse the policy.

But Thompson said it wouldn't matter if the lawsuit were dropped because it already has thrust intelligent design into the public dialogue.

"The genie is out of the bottle," he said.

Fights are on Varied Fronts

The center rarely hesitates to take on controversial cases.

It has been defending the 50-year display of a 29-foot cross atop Mount Soledad in La Jolla, Calif. The firm is also representing 12 anti-abortion activists who were fined millions of dollars for identifying and publishing the names and addresses of abortion doctors in Portland, Ore.

The firm has also worked on a variety of Ten Commandments cases and worked to stop same-sex marriage rights in Michigan and other states.

The center is also not shy about ruffling its neighbors, including the Ann Arbor Public Schools.

"We seem to be a test case for them," said district spokeswoman Liz Margolis.
A federal judge last year ordered the school district to pay $100,000 to the firm in legal fees following the case of student Elizabeth Hansen. Hansen unsuccessfully sought to get her opposing views on homosexuality discussed on a Diversity Week panel in which ministers explored the compatibility of homosexuality with some faiths. The courts ruled her rights to free speech were violated.

School officials said it was simply a mistake by educators who are not well-versed in constitutional law. They also said their decisions were not part of a pattern of bigotry, but just the opposite: They sought to promote tolerance and understanding.
Randy Friedman called the lawsuit "opportunist," especially in an era when all school districts are struggling with limited dollars.

"If you are pursing a principle, even if it's a praiseworthy principle, aren't there ways to achieve it without stripping away badly needed dollarsfrom innocent kids?"

Friedman said. "The only people that got penalized here was the kids."

School officials also can't figure out why the firm has filed another lawsuit challenging their same-sex benefits policy, when the city, county and university have similar policies.

"We spend a lot of potential instruction money trying to defend the rights of the students and our staff against a small minority of people trying to dictate how public schools should operate," Margolis said.

But Thompson said that's ridiculous.

His firm is only working to ensure that the rights of Christians are not trampled on and to reform what he sees as an increasingly anti-Christian society.
"We look at ourselves as counterculture," Thompson said. "We're trying to change the culture."

Victory for the Nativity Display; Management Company Backs Down
Wed, Nov 30, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI – After being threatened with fines from their management company if they did not remove a nativity scene from their front lawn, the Samona family of Novi, Michigan, has been informed that the demand to remove the nativity has been withdrawn.
The management company first informed the Samona family that if they did not remove the display, they could be fined up to $100 a week until the display was removed. Since moving into their new home three years ago, the Samona family has displayed a nativity scene on their front lawn during each Christmas season. This year, however, the management company of their subdivision sent them a letter demanding that they remove the nativity scene.

In defiance, the Samona family contacted the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which agreed to represent the family at no charge. The Law Center contacted the management company yesterday on the family’s behalf.

Today the family received a letter from the management company informing them that their nativity display was not in violation of any rules or regulations of the subdivision and apologizing to the family for any distress they have caused. To show its regret over the incident, the company is sending the family a gift basket as a “as a token of our remorse, in the spirit of this holiday season.” The Samona family has requested that the company forward the gift basket to the Saint Vincent DePaul Society in Pontiac, Michigan.

According to Edward White, trial counsel for the Law Center who represented the family, “We are pleased the management company quickly realized the mistake it had made and corrected the matter. The Somanas are a great example for everyone. They showed that people should fight for what they believe in. I am glad the Thomas More Law Center was able to help them.”

Pope Sides with 'Intelligent Design' Advocates
Sun, Nov 13, 2005

Chicago Sun-Times - By Nicole Winfield

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI has waded into the evolution debate in the United States, saying the universe was made by an ''intelligent project'' and criticizing those who in the name of science say its creation was without direction or order.

Benedict made the off-the-cuff comments during his general audience Wednesday. The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published the full text of his remarks in its Thursday editions.

Benedict focused his reflections for the audience on scriptural readings that said God's love was seen in the ''marvels of creation.''

He quoted St. Basil the Great, a fourth century saint, as saying some people, ''fooled by the atheism that they carry inside of them, imagine a universe free of direction and order, as if at the mercy of chance.''

Remarks hailed by advocates

''How many of these people are there today? These people, fooled by atheism, believe and try to demonstrate that it's scientific to think that everything is free of direction and order,'' he said.

''With the sacred Scripture, the Lord awakens the reason that sleeps and tells us: In the beginning, there was the creative word. In the beginning, the creative word -- this word that created everything and created this intelligent project that is the cosmos -- is also love.''

His comments were hailed by advocates of intelligent design, who hold that the universe is so complex, it must have been created by a higher power. Proponents of the theory seek to get public schools in the United States to teach it as part of the science curriculum.

Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism -- a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation -- camouflaged in scientific language and does not belong in science curriculum.

John Paul's remark 'rather vague'

Questions about the Vatican's position on evolution came up in July by Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn.

In a New York Times op-ed piece, Schoenborn seemed to back intelligent design and dismissed a 1996 statement by Pope John Paul II that evolution was ''more than just a hypothesis.'' Schoenborn said the late pope's statement was ''rather vague and unimportant.''

Schoenborn attended Wednesday's audience.

 
San Diego to Appeal Cross Decision - Judge Nullified Citizens' 75% Vote to Maintain Landmark
Thu, Nov 10, 2005

World Net Daily - by James Lambert

The city of San Diego will appeal a court ruling that nullified an overwhelming vote by its citizens to save a historic cross that sits on public land.

Attorney Charles LiMandri, who represented the city in the case, told WorldNetDaily yesterday that newly elected Mayor Jerry Sanders informed him of the decision to appeal the Oct. 7 ruling by San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia Yim Cowett.
Cowett's decision effectively overturned Proposition A, passed by 75 percent of voters in July, which called for the city to donate the cross to the federal government as the centerpiece of a veterans memorial.

But Cowett ruled such action would be an unconstitutional aid to religion.
The conflict arises from an ACLU lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the 29-foot concrete structure, which has been the center of a war memorial on city land since 1954.
 
Deputy City Attorney David Karlin confirmed to WND that Sanders intends to appeal the decision. Karlin explained that the city cannot file its appeal until the court signs an entry of judgment, which must be requested by the plaintiff. When that occurs, likely some time this month, the city will then have 60 days in which to file an appeal.

LiMandri, who works with the Thomas More Law Center, a public interest group, believes the case ultimately will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

He has offered his services again to San Diego pro-bono, but the city has not decided yet who will represent it in the new legal round of appeal.

The Law Center provided legal analysis that formed the basis for a federal law that declared the cross and memorial as a National War Memorial and authorized the federal government to receive a donation of the land.

A bill authorizing the federal government to take over the memorial was authored by Republican U.S. Reps. Duncan Hunter and Randy Cunningham. President Bush signed the bill into law in December.

The ballot initiative came about after the city refused to donate the cross and memorial to the federal government. A group called San Diegans for the Mount Soledad National War Memorial took just 23 days to gather 105,000 signatures.

The battle began in 1989 when Phillip Paulsen, an atheist, filed suit, and a court ordered the city to remove the cross. San Diego responded by placing the property up for sale, with the approval of 76 percent of voters. But the subsequent sale was ruled unconstitutional after Paulsen objected, arguing the sale had the effect of preserving the cross.

Paulsen argues that the cross is a violation of the First Amendment's ban on government establishment of a religion.
 
In 1998, the city sold the property to the Mt. Soledad War Memorial Association, which again was challenged in court. The sale originally was upheld but later ruled unconstitutional by the full panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and remanded back to district court to work out a remedy.

During its brief period of ownership, the Memorial Association made significant improvements, including extensive landscaping and the addition of more than 3,000 plaques honoring military veterans.

Intelligent Designer - The Chief Defender of Intelligent Design in the Dover Evolution Trial Insists He has Science and God on His Side
Thu, Oct 20, 2005

Salon.com
By Gordy Slack

Richard Thompson has a startling habit of thrusting his fist to his mouth and biting his index finger between the first and second knuckles, as if trying to keep himself from saying too much. But as quickly as it goes in, the finger comes out again and his words begin to flow. He cannot help himself. He must tell the truth. As he sees it.

Thompson is the founder, president and chief council of the Thomas More Law Center, a nonprofit group in Ann Arbor, Mich. The Law Center is representing the Dover School Board pro bono in the current landmark case that pits the theory of evolution against "intelligent design," the theory that some features of the natural world are best explained as the products of an intelligent cause or designer. The Law Center describes itself as "the Sword and Shield for People of Faith," and was originally funded by ultraconservative Domino's Pizza millionaire Thomas Monaghan, who is, like Thompson, a Catholic.

On Sept. 26, the first day of trial, Thompson, in an elegant dark suit, is standing on the steps of the U.S. Middle District Courthouse in Harrisburg, Pa. The trial has adjourned for the day. It is expected to continue through the first week of November.
A light rain falls as lawyers and advocates on both sides of the debate are making public comments. But nearly all of the reporters, photographers and cameramen surround Thompson. He is short and powerfully built, white-haired but bald on top, and endowed with an impressive nose and preternaturally white teeth. He has the defiant, almost menacing energy of an armed man on a moral mission.

Thompson is holding forth on his defense strategy. He says his scientific experts will show that I.D. is a valid scientific theory based on empirical observation by credentialed and respected scientists. He is arguing that no theory should be judged by its historical roots, even if they are religious, or even if they are creationist. Modern chemistry emerged from alchemy, after all, and that doesn't make it bogus.
Astronomy emerged from astrology, and we don't hold that against it. Nor should a theory be judged by the personal ideologies of those who hold it; plenty of Darwinists are atheists, but that doesn't disqualify evolutionary biology as an ideology, he says.

Schools that want to include the I.D. debate in their curriculum deserve the right to do so, Thompson says. Denying them that right is a form of both scientific and religious discrimination. "I.D. is seeking a place in the classroom because of its merits," he says. "But it's being kept out because it is harmonious with the Christian faith."

He continues: "There are two Americas today, one that's still very religiously based, and another that has no foundation, where everything is relative, where everything goes." And the moral relativism that dominates the second America is an ideology enabled by Darwinism.

"All scientific theories, including Darwinism, have religious implications," Thompson says. And the religious implication of Darwinism is atheism. Furthermore, moral relativism, atheism and the idolatry of science are symptoms of our "floundering society." Thompson says he aims to put society back on track, and that track is there for us, laid down by God. "We do this, all of the attorneys I'm working with do this, because of our religious commitment."

"Do you believe that we and other primates descended from common ancestors?" a British filmmaker calls out. Thompson bites his finger and says, "Do I think I evolved from an ape? No, I don't believe my ancestor was a monkey."

Thompson stole the lines from William Jennings Bryan.

Bryan was the lawyer, orator, statesman and progressive evangelical Christian who, 80 years ago, argued against teaching evolution in high school in the Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tenn. Although Bryan won the Scopes trial, he is remembered for taking an intellectual pummeling on the stand by Clarence Darrow -- perhaps the second most famous lawyer of the day and an advocate for evolution and modernity. While the Scopes trial set off decades of anti-evolution legislation in states around the country, it is also remembered as the beginning of the end for American creationism.

Who could have guessed that the ideologies fueling the Scopes trial would evolve enough to bring us this new version four-fifths of a century (and libraries full of evolution-supporting evidence) later? Well, Thompson could have. "Questions about the role of design in creation have been asked for thousands of years," he says. "They haven't been put to rest at all. They're just getting stronger."

Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District -- the trial's official name -- was hatched in October 2004 when a small south central Pennsylvania community's school board passed a resolution mandating that ninth-grade biology teachers launch their class by reading four paragraphs to their students. The paragraphs cast doubt on the validity of evolutionary theory and say that there are competing theories (specifically I.D.) and that copies of an I.D.-friendly textbook, "Of Pandas and People," are available in the library for anyone who wants to learn more. Several members of the school board quit in protest when the proposal passed, and in December, 11 parents sued the board, accusing it of violating the First Amendment.

The suing parents -- backed by the ACLU, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the huge Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton LLP -- are claiming that I.D. is not a scientific theory, but a religious one, namely creationism, and has no business posing as science in biology classrooms.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III (a George W. Bush appointee) will have to decide, following testimony by scientists, philosophers, theologians and historians of science (as well as the plaintiffs and school board members), whether telling Dover's ninth-graders about I.D. is exposing them to an "underdog science," as Thompson calls it, or is promoting a particular religion.

If Judge Jones decides in favor of the Dover school board, dozens of other school boards around the country are waiting in the wings to implement I.D. into their science curricula. If he decides for the defendants, Darwin's theory of evolution alone will continue to be taught in public schools as the scientific explanation for the diversity of life. Regardless of how Judge Jones votes, both sides have said they will appeal the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Thompson gained fame as the Michigan state prosecutor who repeatedly charged assisted-suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian with first-degree murder, and didn't stop pursuing him until Thompson was elected out of office, in large part for hounding Kevorkian. Thompson is also known for pushing through mandatory life sentences in Michigan for drug crimes and for prosecuting more drug offenders than anyone else. And, of course, Thompson shares with Bryan the conviction that Darwinism is perhaps the world's most dangerous idea.

But for Thompson to prevail in his quixotic battle to convince the court that I.D. has a place in a nearby high school's ninth-grade biology class, he will need more than confidence and religious zeal. Although divine intervention might help, what he really needs are some new and compelling arguments to help I.D. sneak around the constitutional prohibition against promoting a particular religious view in the public schools. And he thinks he's got them.

It's a week into the trial and Thompson is cross-examining John Haught, an expert witness for the plaintiffs. Haught, a recently retired professor of theology at Georgetown University, is the author of 13 books, including "God After Darwin" and "Science and Religion in Search of Cosmic Purpose." Haught has argued that I.D. is nothing more than a "reformulation of the old argument for the existence of God that says, 'Where there is a design there must be a designer.'"

The famous theologian William Paley popularized this argument in the early 1800s. Upon finding a watch, he said, it would be reasonable to deduce the existence of a watchmaker. Well, explains Haught, the I.D. theorists make the same deduction from what they call the "irreducible complexity" of certain sub-cellular structures, such as the bacterial flagellum, a little motorlike propeller that moves bacteria around.
By "irreducibly complex," the I.D.ers mean that if you remove any part of the motor, the others will no longer serve any identifiable function at all, and so the flagellum could not have been selected for by natural selection. Irreducible complexity is the core of I.D.'s criticism of evolutionary biology, and in one version or another it has always been the central creationist argument.

The biology of I.D. had been hammered by the plaintiffs' expert scientific witness days before. Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller argued that I.D. can never be science because it resorts to supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. Miller, who described himself as a devout Catholic and a believer in God, did not claim that there are no supernatural forces in the world, only that they are not the business of science.

"Science deals with natural causes for natural phenomenon," Miller testified. "Intelligent design is a science stopper" because "it lets scientists off the hook" precisely when things get tricky, which is also when they get interesting -- that is, when a naturalistic cause isn't obvious. But, Miller insisted, "just because you don't see at first how something could be the product of natural selection doesn't mean it couldn't be. Such challenges should spur a scientist to look deeper, not tell him it's time to retire and just attribute something to the work of an intelligent designer."
Haught's main job on the stand is to talk about the history and theology of I.D., which he says is a direct descendent of creation science (also called special creationism), which in turn is a descendent of the kind of primitive, young-earth creationism debated in the Scopes trial.

Young-earth creationism, Haught explains, takes Genesis literally, posits that the world is between 6,000 and 10,000 years old, and claims that animal fossils are left behind by the Great Flood. Special creationism accepts a more realistic geological age for the earth and acknowledges the influence of micro-evolution (subtle change within a species). However, special creationism still holds that God created all species separately and pretty much as they are now.

Both theories have been rejected as science by U.S. courts. In 1982, a federal court declared unconstitutional an Arkansas law requiring that evolution and young-earth creationism be taught side by side. The court said creationism was religion and couldn't be taught as science. In 1987, in a Louisiana case, the Supreme Court declared creation science to be religion, and deemed unconstitutional a Louisiana law mandating teaching it in the public schools wherever evolution was taught. Almost immediately I.D. was born, adopting more sophisticated versions of the old creationist arguments and replacing all references to God with an unspecified intelligent designer.

As Thompson begins his cross-examination, he instinctively looks, and grins, at the jury box, where the press is sitting.

"Just because you can trace an idea back to antiquity does not in and of itself make that idea invalid, does it?" Thompson asks Haught.

"No," Haught says.

"Because a theory belongs to an individual of a certain faith doesn't make that theory invalid does it?" continues Thompson.

No, says Haught, pointing out that many evolutionists hold various faiths or no faith at all.

"It would be a fallacy to say that a scientific theory was invalid just because it comes from one particular tradition or another, wouldn't it?"

"Yes."

Thompson reads from Haught's book "Deeper Than Darwin," in which the theologian writes that proponents of I.D. are often highly trained and skilled scientists, that they are no more or less intelligent than their counterparts in evolutionary biology, and that they are neither stupid nor insane.

All true, acknowledges Haught.

Thompson goes to another of Haught's books and reads a section in which the theologian criticizes Robert Pennock, a Michigan State philosopher who had testified against I.D. two days earlier. In the passage, Haught takes Pennock to task for "misleading the public by conflating ID and creationism."
 
"And yet you have said today that they are the same. Are they the same or not?" asks Thompson.

"They are not exactly the same," says Haught, his lips trembling, clearly perturbed.

Thompson reads the final sentence from an early edition of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species": "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one ... from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

So, Thompson asks, should Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" be kept outside the science classroom because it talks about the Creator with a capital "C" breathing life into early forms?

"No," concedes Haught.

Thompson then gets Haught to agree that several luminary evolutionary biologists draw metaphysical conclusions from their studies of evolution. "Yes, [Richard] Dawkins, [Edward O.] Wilson, and [Stephen Jay] Gould carelessly conflate their science with materialist ideology," says Haught. (Materialism is the belief that reality is composed only of matter and nothing supernatural exists, except in imaginations.)

"Should their work be banned from science classrooms?"

"No."

The shape of Thompson's case is beginning to emerge and Judge Jones, suddenly sitting up attentively and tipping his head toward the lawyer, seems to be taking notice. The court, and more broadly the scientific establishment, Thompson argues, must evaluate the scientific claims of I.D. on their merits, not condemning them by association with their religious roots or boosters. And those I.D. claims, he is implying, are already engaged by evolutionary scientists in debate. And that engagement itself is proof of a scientific controversy worthy of teaching in schools.

Perhaps feeling overconfident, Thompson takes aim at the Goliath of modern evolutionary genetics. He wants to show that the correlations between different species' genomes -- humans and chimpanzees, for example, which share 98 percent of their genes -- say nothing about the evolutionary relationships between organisms.
"Let's say I have some bolts, and from them I make both a plane and a car. Yes, they have the same parts, but that doesn't mean the car came from the plane does it?"
 
"Uh, no," says Haught, pausing to consider what Thompson could be driving at.

Thompson pauses too, turns again to the jury box and smiles triumphantly. He concludes that it is therefore easy to see that it is only mere conjecture that humans and other primates share genes just because they share an evolutionary lineage.

The jury box of reporters and many courtroom spectators seem dumbfounded. How could Thompson so confidently reveal such a basic misunderstanding of the role of genomics in analyzing and confirming evolutionary relationships? There are moments in the trial when even a science-abiding secularist can be seduced by parts of Thompson's ethical and philosophical arguments that I.D. deserves a fair hearing in the public schools. But time and again, Thompson's insistence that I.D. is science and not religion, and therefore by law can be taught in science classes, does not appear to be making any converts in the courtroom.

Later, anthropologist Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, who was in the courtroom, says it was all she could do to keep from cracking up. "Thompson was not even wrong," Scott says. "He missed the boat completely. We didn't need genomics to demonstrate evolution. But having genomic sequences of different species nails down the big idea that the more recently that two forms shared a common ancestor, the more alike they are in anatomy, biochemistry, embryology, behavior and genetics. And it does so beautifully and quantitatively."

When court adjourns for the day, Thompson drags his rolling suitcase filled with briefs to the aging Harrisburg Hilton, a few blocks from the courthouse. We settle down in the lobby for an interview.

"Did you see me show that there's no scientific evidence for man coming from an ape?" he asks enthusiastically. "I shouldn't have. But I couldn't help myself. I just wanted to do that."

I figure it's best to change the subject. I tell him that in profile he looks quite a bit like Bryan. It's a bit of a stretch, but not entirely untrue.

He laughs disarmingly, delighted. "Frederick March, the actor in the movie 'Inherit the Wind,' or the real William Jennings Bryan?"

The real Bryan, I say.

He hits me gently on the shoulder and laughs again, clearly pleased.

I ask Thompson why this battle matters so much to him. He pauses, putting his hands together as if in prayer. "If you are nothing but an accident of nature, then nothing you do is dependent on objective truth," he says. "You can set your own rules. There is no life after death. There are no set moral codes. If you go to bed, and if you die its OK, you're just another piece of matter bouncing around and you'll change into something else. That's why, even if 100 million scientists say we are unplanned, that we're just purposeless beings in this universe, the general population won't buy it. And neither will I."

He then reiterates his notion that I.D. is an underdog science that shouldn't be relegated to theology just because current science hasn't caught up with it. He compares I.D. to the Big Bang Theory, which was once unpopular and thought to have been religiously motivated.

"Einstein thought the Big Bang was wrong because it didn't fit his metaphysics," says Thompson. "But he was the one who was wrong. Should it have been illegal to discuss the Big Bang in schools just because it was consistent with Christianity?"

As he did in court, Thompson tells me that I.D. theorists are real scientists. "They are distinguished scientists doing credible experimental work, and they have found evidence of intelligent design in the empirical data that they see," he says. "If the evidence suggests design, well ... should they ignore it?"

Early this week, Michael Behe, a biochemist from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, and the person who put "irreducible complexity" on the map with his 1996 book "Darwin's Black Box," appeared on the stand for two days. He explained that natural selection could not explain the existence of DNA or the immune system. He insisted that ID is not based on any religious beliefs but "is based on observed, empirical, physical evidence from nature, and it is definitely science." When asked if the designer was God, he said yes, but added, "I concluded that based on theological, philosophical and historical facts."

As we talk, Thompson bristles at the notion that I.D. is and always will be excluded from science. "What is science, and what is not science, is merely a convention," he says. "It can be challenged and changed at will by scientists themselves. And scientists are the products of their culture, too."

Doesn't he find it a little odd that a champion of unchanging and absolute moral values should take such a relativist stance on science? He shrugs off the question.
"Look, scientists don't sit there and ask, 'Am I doing science or not?' No scientist is going to say, 'This is empirical truth about the wrong subject so I'm not going to study it.' No, they look at whatever the empirical data is, and draw conclusions from it."

"So you want to change the definition of science to include the supernatural?"

"Yes," he says, "we need a total paradigm shift in science."

Expert Witness Sees Evidence in Nature for Intelligent Design
Tue, Oct 18, 2005

NEW YORK TIMES

HARRISBURG, Pa., Oct. 17 - Michael J. Behe, a biochemistry professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, has spent the last eight years traveling to colleges promoting intelligent design as a challenge to the theory of evolution.

On Monday Mr. Behe brought his lecture and slides to a closely watched trial in federal district court, where a judge will decide whether the town of Dover, Pa., violated the boundary between church and state when it required students to hear a statement about intelligent design in a high school biology class.

The Dover school board is being sued by 11 parents who say intelligent design is inappropriate in a biology class because it is merely religious creationism repackaged to resemble science. Proponents of intelligent design, however, argue that living organisms are so complex that the best explanation is that a higher intelligence designed them.

With the trial in its fourth week, Mr. Behe was the first expert witness for the defense. Asked whether intelligent design is religion, or "based on any religious beliefs," Mr. Behe said, "No, it isn't."

"It is based entirely on observable, physical evidence from nature," he said.
Mr. Behe said the "best and most striking example of design" is the bacterial flagellum, "the outboard motor bacteria use to swim." He projected a drawing of a flagellum depicting what he called a "rotary motor" attached to a "drive shaft" that pushes a propeller, and said it was impossible avoid concluding that the mechanism was "a purposeful arrangement of parts."

Mr. Behe is the author of "Darwin's Black Box," a book published in 1996 that spurred the intelligent design movement. He is also a fellow at the Discovery Institute, a research organization that advocates intelligent design.

For three weeks, the plaintiffs called expert witnesses, including a biologist, a theologian, a paleontologist and two philosophers, who testified that intelligent design did not meet the definition of science because it could not be tested or disproved. They said that intelligent design proponents had not published scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals and that most scientists did not question evolution's basic tenets.

Mr. Behe testified that intelligent design was science and that it made testable claims.

Mr. Behe said he had been able to publish only one article on intelligent design in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, a piece he co-wrote in Protein Science in 2004.
Robert Muise, a defense lawyer, asked Mr. Behe, "Do you perceive a bias against publishing articles on intelligent design in peer-reviewed journals?"

Mr. Behe said he did. "My ideas on intelligent design have been subjected to a thousand times more scrutiny than anything I've written before."

Mr. Behe testified that intelligent design did not claim to identify the intelligent designer, or even to "require knowledge of the designer."

However, Mr. Behe, a Roman Catholic, was asked whether he had concluded that "the designer is God." He said yes, but added that his conclusion was not based on science.
"I concluded that based on theological, philosophical and historical facts," he said.
Mr. Behe said he believed schools should teach evolution because it was "widely used in science" and "many aspects are well substantiated." And he said intelligent design was "quite limited" because it challenged only one part of evolutionary theory, natural selection.

Mr. Muise then asked whether natural selection could "explain the existence" of DNA, the immune system or blood clotting. Mr. Behe said no.

As Mr. Behe's responses grew increasingly long and arcane, Judge John E. Jones III slumped in his chair. When Mr. Muise asked the judge whether he should stop for the day, Judge Jones sat up and agreed, saying, "We've certainly absorbed a lot, haven't we?"

Randy Tomasacci, a woodworker who serves on his school board in Shickshinny, Pa., said his district was considering teaching intelligent design. He said Mr. Behe's testimony "reinforces my point of view."

Thomas More Law Center To Argue For Reversal of Decision Permitting Public Schools to Teach Students to “Become Muslims”
Mon, Oct 17, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI — On Wednesday, October 19, 2005, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, California, will hear oral arguments in Eklund v. Byron Union School District. The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, represents several parents and children who challenged the Byron Union School District’s practice of teaching twelve-year-old students “to become Muslims.”

For three weeks, impressionable twelve-year-old students were, among other things, placed into Islamic city groups, took Islamic names, wore identification tags that displayed their new Islamic name and the Star and Crescent Moon, which is the symbol of Muslims, were handed materials that instructed them to “Remember Allah always so that you may prosper,” completed the Islamic Five Pillars of Faith, including fasting, and memorized and recited the “Bismillah” or “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,” which students also wrote on banners that were hung on the classroom walls.

A federal district court judge in San Francisco had previously determined that the school district had not violated the constitution.
 
According to Richard Thompson, Chief Counsel of the Law Center, “There is a double-standard at play in this case. If the students had done similar activities in a class on Christianity, a constitutional violation would surely have been found. If the public school’s practice is upheld on appeal, all public schools should begin teaching classes on Christianity in the same manner as the Islam class was taught in this case.”

Edward L. White III, trial counsel with the Law Center commented, “Rather than teach students about Islam, which is constitutional, the public school crossed the constitutional line and began indoctrinating students. The public school placed students into the position of being trainees in Islam, which is impermissible in a public school.”

'Intelligent Design' Advocate Testifies
Mon, Oct 17, 2005

NEW YORK TIMES

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- A biochemistry professor who is a leading advocate of ''intelligent design'' testified Monday that evolution alone can't explain complex biological processes and he believes God is behind them.

Lehigh University Professor Michael Behe was the first witness called by a school board that is requiring students to hear a statement about the intelligent design concept in biology class. Lawyers for the Dover Area School Board began presenting their case Monday in the landmark federal trial, which could decide whether it can be mentioned in public school science classes as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

Behe, whose work includes a 1996 best-seller called ''Darwin's Black Box,'' said students should be taught evolution because it's widely used in science and that ''any well-educated student should understand it.''

Behe, however, argues that evolution cannot fully explain the biological complexities of life, suggesting the work of an intelligent force.

The intelligent design theory does not name the designer, although Behe, a Roman Catholic, testified he personally believes it to be God.

''I conclude that based on theological and philosophical and historical factors,'' he said.

The school board is defending its decision a year ago to require students to hear a statement on intelligent design before ni nth-grade biology lessons on evolution. The statement says Charles Darwin's theory is ''not a fact,'' has inexplicable ''gaps,'' and refers students to a textbook, ''Of Pandas and People,'' for more information.
Behe contributed to ''Of Pandas and People,'' writing a section about blood-clotting. He told a federal judge Monday that in the book, he made a scientific argument that blood-clotting ''is poorly explained by Darwinian processes but well explained by design.''

Eight families sued to have intelligent design removed from the biology curriculum, contending the policy essentially promotes the Bible's view of creation and therefore violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

Mainstream scientists have rejected intelligent design as scientifically untested and contend that its supporters focus on attacking evolutionary theory rather than providing evidence for design.

Behe, who was expected to remain on the stand throughout the day Monday, compared the outcry over intelligent design to the early criticism of the big-bang theory some 70 years ago. ''Many people thought it had philosophical and even theological implications that they did not like,'' he said.

Lehigh's biology department sought to distance itself from Behe in August, posting a statement on its Web site that says the faculty ''are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory.'' He earned tenure at Lehigh before becoming a proponent, which lets him express his views without the threat of losing his job.

The trial began Sept. 26 and is expected to last up to five weeks.

The plaintiffs are represented by a team put together by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The school district is being represented by the Thomas More Law Center, a public-interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Mich., that says its mission is to defend the religious freedom of Christians.

Atheist’s Comments Reveal Battle Over Mt. Soledad Cross is Not About the Constitution But an Attack On Christianity
Thu, Sep 29, 2005

RANCHO SANTA FE, CA — For sixteen years atheist Philip Paulson claiming he wants to maintain neutrality between government and religion, has been waging an unrelenting war against the Mt. Soledad Cross that is the centerpiece of the historic Veterans Memorial in San Diego. However, Paulson’s comments on the website of the Atheist Coalition of San Diego reveals his true motivation is hatred for Christianity.

Paulson goes so far as to state; “We need to attack Jesus…” Those comments, followed by vulgar remarks about Christ, God and the Virgin Mary are so crude and offensive that the Thomas More Law Center will not repeat them. However, Richard Thompson, President of the Law Center commented, “These remarks show the plaintiff to be nothing more than a foul-mouthed anti-Christian whose agenda is not to defend the Constitution, but to attack Christianity.”
 
In the past two weeks, Paulson’s attorney James McElroy has joined his client in making offensive remarks. He recently compared San Diego City Attorney, Michael Aguirre's, retention of Charles LiMandri, a Christian lawyer from the Thomas More Law Center, to represent the City to hiring the Ku Klux Klan to represent the City in a desegregation case.

McElroy has used this highly offensive analogy in his public comments at least three times over a ten-day period. McElroy, who is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Southern Poverty Law Center based in Alabama, knows very well just how prejudicial that analogy is to most people. In fact, it was McElroy who previously brought suit in San Diego against Tom Metzger, a convicted white supremacist.

McElroy offended African Americans who attended a September 16, 2005 meeting of the Catfish Club in San Diego when he again likened Aguirre's recent retention of LiMandri, West Coast Regional Director of the Thomas More Law Center, to the hiring of Metzger to represent the City. In fact, LiMandri began his career years ago by working for the San Diego City Attorney's Office and is a Board certified civil trial advocate who has been involved with the case for over a year.

Paulson and McElroy's offensive comments reveal that their motivation has nothing whatsoever to do with their claimed purpose, which is allegedly to maintain "neutrality" between government and religion. Rather, their hate-speech manifests their overt hostility toward religion and their desire to intimidate the opposition into submission. It is now all too clear that Paulson and McElroy are seeking to use the courts to advance their anti-religion agenda, which is strictly forbidden by the Constitution.

Court Tackles 'Intelligent Design'
Mon, Sep 26, 2005

HARRISBURG, Pa. - CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras reports that eighty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial, the opening of the trial in federal court marked the latest legal chapter in the debate over the teaching of evolution in public school.
"Intelligent design" is a religious theory that was inserted in a school district's curriculum with no concern for whether it had scientific underpinnings, a lawyer told a federal judge Monday as a landmark trial got under way.

"They did everything you would do if you wanted to incorporate a religious point of view in science class and cared nothing about its scientific validity," said Eric Rothschild, an attorney representing eight families who are challenging the decision of the Dover Area School District.

But in his opening statement, the school district's attorney defended Dover's policy of requiring ninth-grade students to hear a brief statement about intelligent design before biology classes on evolution.

"This case is about free inquiry in education, not about a religious agenda," argued Patrick Gillen of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. "Dover's modest curriculum change embodies the essence of liberal education." The center, which lobbies for what it sees as the religious freedom of Christians, is defending the school district.

But to some observers, the anti-evolutionists are winning the public relations battle, Assuras reports. Fourteen states have introduced legislation in support of intelligent design. President Bush said recently that "both sides ought to be properly taught."
The eight families argue that the district policy violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

One of those parents is Barrie Callahan, who spoke with Assuras (video).

"Religion cannot be taught in science class," Callahan told Assuras. "Science isn't about 'who.' Science is about 'what, how.' It's not about 'who.'"

About 75 spectators crowded the courtroom of U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III for the start of the non-jury trial. But the scene outside the courthouse was business as usual except for a lone woman reading the Bible.

Arguing that intelligent design is a religious theory, not science, Rothschild said he would show that the language in the school district's own policy made clear its religious intent.

Dover is believed to be the first school system in the nation to require students be exposed to the intelligent design concept, under a policy adopted by a 6-3 vote in October 2004.

It requires teachers to read a statement that says intelligent design differs from Darwin's view and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook, "Of Pandas and People," for more information.

Intelligent design, a concept some scholars have advanced over the past 15 years, holds that Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms. It implies that life on Earth was the product of an unidentified intelligent force.

Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism — a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation — camouflaged in scientific language, and it does not belong in a science curriculum.

But Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas Moore Law Center, which lobbies for the religious freedom of Christians and is defending the school district, told Assuras that advocates of intelligent design just want to "teach the controversy."(video).

"It's good education to allow students to know that there is a controversy surrounding biological evolution," Thompson told Assuras.

Brown University professor Kenneth Miller, the first witness called by the plaintiffs, said pieces of the theory of evolution are subject to debate, such as where gender comes from, but told the court: "There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory."

On the other hand, he said, "Intelligent design is not a testable theory in any sense and as such it is not accepted by the scientific community."

Miller also challenged the accuracy of "Of Pandas and People" and said it almost entirely omits any discussion of what causes extinction. If nearly all original species are extinct, he said, the intelligent design creator was not very intelligent.
The history of evolution litigation dates back to the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T. Scopes was fined $100 for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution. The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed his conviction on the narrow ground that only a jury trial could impose a fine exceeding $50, and the law was repealed in 1967.

In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an Arkansas state law banning the teaching of evolution. And in 1987, it ruled that states may not require public schools to balance evolution lessons by teaching creationism.

The clash over intelligent-design is evident far beyond this rural district of about 3,500 students 20 miles south of Harrisburg. President Bush has weighed in, saying schools should present both concepts when teaching about the origins of life.
In August, the Kansas Board of Education gave preliminary approval to science standards that allow intelligent design-style alternatives to be discussed alongside evolution.

Wall Street Journal - Scopes, 2005: 'Design' Theory Faces Legal Test
Thu, Sep 22, 2005

Debates about the boundaries of science and religion that marked the famous Scopes trial in 1925 are likely to unfold next week at a Harrisburg, Pa., federal courthouse in the first legal test of an anti-evolution doctrine known as "intelligent design."
 
Aided by the American Civil Liberties Union, 11 parents of Dover, Pa., schoolchildren have filed a federal lawsuit against that town's school board, accusing it of violating the principle of separation of church and state. The school board requires that at the beginning of the 9th grade unit on evolution, teachers are supposed to read a statement to a biology class: "Because Darwin's theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact...Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view."

Science teachers balked and many Dover parents were angered as well. The plaintiffs are asking the court to void the intelligent-design policy in the class.

The intelligent-design doctrine asserts that some natural processes are so complex and ingenious that they must have been created by an intelligent or supernatural cause -- perhaps God -- rather than the randomness of natural selection.

Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District is expected to draw national media attention as well as expert witnesses from Brown University and other prominent institutions. The trial, slated to last five weeks, will be monitored by scientists, educators and politicians around the country. The trial will not be televised.

The outcome is likely to influence state school boards in Kansas and Ohio, which have moved toward allowing teachers to critique Darwin's theory, as well as policies in many individual school districts. "The results of the Dover trial will be extremely significant for American public school education," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the nonprofit National Center for Science Education, based in California, an organization that advocates teaching evolution and advised the plaintiff's team on science matters.

"If the judge rules in favor of the plaintiffs, then this will truly throw sand in the gears of efforts to get intelligent design taught at the high school level," said Ms. Scott. "If the judge rules...for the district, I think this will give a green light to school districts that would like to introduce some form of creationism in the classroom."

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, the leading backers of intelligent design, say they are delving into scientific mysteries to explain such biological developments as the workings of cells. "We don't say God designed," said John West, associate director for the institute's Center for Science and Culture. "It's not about trying to reconcile science with some religious text. It's about this longstanding question in biology about the appearance of design."

The trial also has potential ramifications for public higher education, where the evolution-creation dispute is heating up. The University of California at Berkeley faces a lawsuit from students at Christian private schools who say they can't go to the prestigious campus because the science courses they took -- based on anti-evolution textbooks -- don't fulfill its admission requirements. At Ohio State University, a review of a doctoral dissertation in science education by an intelligent-design proponent was put on hold this spring after faculty protests. And at Iowa State University, where a faculty member who teaches astronomy wrote a book contending that the Earth must have been created by design, more than 120 faculty signed a petition this year saying that intelligent design is not science.

Critics of intelligent design, who include most mainstream biologists, say it is religion masquerading as science -- essentially, the latest evolution of creationism. But Christian educators and intelligent-design backers were heartened last month when President Bush said that both sides of the origins debate should be taught. "It is a legitimate controversy among scientists and credible scientists believe that intelligent design is a better explanation for complex biological systems than we have seen," said Richard Thompson, defense attorney for the Dover school board and chief counsel with the not-for-profit Christian law group, the Thomas More Law Center.

The Dover Area School District was the first in the nation to include a mention of intelligent design in the science curriculum. For now, the theory isn't actually taught.

"The intent [by Dover officials] is to systematically destroy the theory of evolution because the theory tells the students we came from monkeys," said plaintiff Bryan Rehm, who has a daughter in ninth grade at Dover High. "According to them we didn't come from monkeys. God made us as the way we are today...That's fine, but that's not science. That's the book of Genesis. And the last time I checked, the Bible is still a religious text."

The jury at the carnival-esque Scopes trial in 1925 supported a Tennessee law making it unlawful "to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible." But the legal tide since has not been kind to evolution opponents. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the last of the Scopes-type anti-evolution laws in Epperson v. Arkansas in 1968, and lower courts followed suit in scuttling so-called "equal time" laws that required schools to teach creation science. In January, a federal court ordered Cobb County, Ga., to remove evolution warning labels on biology texts, saying they had "an impermissible effect" of promoting religion. That decision is on appeal.

Nevertheless, the anti-evolution forces have pressed on. The Kansas Board of Education voted in August to include greater criticism of evolution in its school-science standards -- which lists all aspects of the subject teachers should present. An outside academic agency is reviewing the proposed curriculum and it comes up for a vote in October. In 2002, Ohio adopted science standards requiring students to examine criticisms of biological evolution.

Opponents of intelligent design are monitoring several school districts in New Mexico, including Rio Rancho, where the school board agreed recently to allow evolution alternatives to be broached in class. Efforts to change science standards have also sprung up in school districts in Maryland, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Mr. Rehm, the Dover parent, and a former Dover physics teacher, said either way, no one in his community wins.

"If the school board gets it in its favor, we've got one more place in the country where kids aren't getting an acceptable science education," Mr. Rehm said. "And if we win, the school board gets stuck footing the bill" for legal expenses.

Court of Appeals Blocks Catholic High School Teachers From Unionizing
Thu, Aug 18, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI. – Teachers at the 675-student, all-boys Brother Rice Catholic High School, located in Bloomfield Township, MI, have lost their bid to become Michigan’s first unionized parochial school.

Last year the Michigan Employment Relations Commission (MERC) ordered Brother Rice High School to allow teachers to vote on whether they wanted union representation by the Michigan Education Association. However, the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, took on the representation of the school and appealed the MERC ruling to the Michigan Court of Appeals.

This week a unanimous panel of the Court of Appeals struck down the MERC ruling on the basis that the state board had no jurisdiction over lay teachers in parochial schools.
 
Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center, commented on the decision, “The Thomas More Law Center agreed to represent Brother Rice because of the broad implications the MERC decision would have on the religious freedom for every church-operated school in the state. I applaud the court panel for its sensitivity to the religious implications of this case. Unions many times espouse public policies inimical to the doctrine of faith-based institutions.”

Patrick Gillen, the Law Center lawyer handling the case, added, "The decision is a victory for religious liberty generally as well as the whole community of faith brought together by Brother Rice High School. It leaves the parents, students, faculty and staff of Brother Rice free to pursue the highest aspirations of religious schools, service to their faith and each other, without interference from the state.”

Brother Rice High School is a private Catholic parochial school run by the Congregation of Christian Brothers, a group of lay individuals, founded in 1802, who operate nearly 300 Catholic schools around the world. The faculty, mostly lay teachers, are not all Catholic, but they are responsible to promote faith-building. Teachers at the school are expected to begin and end classes with prayer. A daily religion class is part of the curriculum.

President Bush’s Backing of Intelligent Design Applauded By the Thomas More Law Center
Wed, Aug 3, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI. – President Bush’s statement to a group of reporters on Monday that he supports discussing the theory of intelligent design alongside the theory of evolution in American classrooms was applauded by the Thomas More Law Center, the national public interest law firm that is representing the Dover, Pennsylvania school district sued for mentioning the theory of intelligent design.

The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State sued the Dover Area School District over a one minute statement to ninth grade biology students that the theory of evolution is not a fact and that gaps in the theory exists for which there is no evidence. The statement went on to say that Intelligent Design is an explanation for the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s. The trial in that lawsuit is scheduled for this September in the Federal District Court in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center, commented, “Contrary to what the advocates of evolution would have the public believe, this is not science versus religion, but science versus science. Credible scientists are looking at the same observable facts and concluding that complex biological systems are best explained by intelligent design, not undirected chance. The fact that intelligent design may be harmonious with some religious beliefs does not make discussing the theory alongside evolution unconstitutional. The same scientists who object to intelligent design being mentioned in public schools, seem to have no problems discussing the Big Bang theory despite its religious overtones.”

Continued Thompson, “President Bush’s position on intelligent design is in accordance with the Final Conference Report of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act which encourages public schools to teach the controversy surrounding biological evolution, and the 1987 Supreme Court decision in Edwards v. Aguillard which ruled that public schools could include scientific alternatives and critiques to Darwinism if done with a clear secular intent to promote effective science education.”

In recent national polls, a majority of Americans say that they would like to see intelligent design, among other alternate theories, taught alongside evolution in their children’s schools. President Bush has long been a supporter of this as well, stating as Governor of Texas, that school boards in that state should be allowed to decide whether to teach other theories on the origins of life in addition to the Darwinian theory.

Voters Have Spoken - The Cross still Reigns over San Diego
Wed, Jul 27, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI. -- Despite fifteen years of adverse court rulings, city council decisions to remove the cross, a local war memorial associations agreement to settle the case by removing the cross, and last week’s surprise decision by a state judge requiring a two-thirds vote of the people before the city would be forced to donate the cross and memorial to the federal government as a national war memorial, the citizens of San Diego spoke loud and clear- - keep the cross where it is as it is.
With 100 percent of the precincts reporting, unofficial results show that over 75 percent of the voters voted to keep the cross and war memorial in yesterdays voting.
 
The 43 foot concrete Mt. Soledad Cross has been the center of a war memorial on city land since 1954. However, in 1989, an atheist filed a federal lawsuit challenging its constitutionality because it was located on public property.

The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, played an instrumental role in saving the cross. Its legal analysis was the basis for a federal law that declared the cross and memorial as a National War Memorial and authorized the federal government to receive a donation of the land on which the cross and memorial stood.

Commenting on the overwhelming voter support for the cross, an elated Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center said, “This is a tremendous victory in an important battle, but the war is not over. The other side has not surrendered; court battles over the cross continue.”

Two court dates are scheduled within the next month. A federal judge will hear arguments over the cross on August 15th, and a state Superior Court judge will hear arguments on the constitutionality of the ballot measure on August 12th.

Chuck LiMandri, Director of the Law Center’s western regional office, personally played a significant role in both the federal and state lawsuits over the cross. LiMandri was instrumental in obtaining the support of area Congressmen, Duncan Hunter and Randy “Duke” Cunningham, both Republicans, who authored the bill authorizing the federal government to take over the memorial as a national war memorial. President Bush signed the bill into law in December 2004.

LiMandri also served as vice –chairman of the San Diegans for the Mount Soledad National War Memorial which was established to coordinate the signature drive to place the issue on the ballot after the city refused to donate the cross and memorial to the federal government. In a historical first, it took only 23 days for the group to gather 105,000 signatures.

Fate of Cross at Center of Mt. Soledad War Memorial In The Hands of San Diego Voters
Mon, Jul 25, 2005

RANCHO SANTA FE, CA – A fifteen year court battle to maintain a forty-three foot concrete cross at the center of a war memorial to honor America’s veterans and war dead atop Mt. Soledad in San Diego, California, may well be decided by voters of that city tomorrow, July 26th. The attorney representing atheist Philip Paulson who sued in federal court to remove the cross claiming separation of church and state, filed a state lawsuit in an attempt to stop the vote from taking place.

Although the state judge refused to stop the voting, she handed supporters of the cross a setback by ruling that the ballot measure requires a two-thirds approval from the voters.

Charles LiMandri, Director of the Thomas More Law Center’s West Coast regional office, has been fighting to keep the cross where it is ever since the city wanted to settle the case by removing the cross. Said LiMandri, “Even though the judge set the bar for success at an unusually high level, we’re still hopeful we will be able to overcome the latest obstacle.”

If Proposition A is approved, the city will donate the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial property to the federal government for use as a national war memorial. Although a favorable vote will not end the federal case, supporters of the proposition see the donation of the property to the government as the only means of protecting the memorial and cross from the continuing adverse court decisions.

The concrete cross has been a part of the memorial on city land since 1954. However, it became the focus of multiple legal cases filed by an ACLU-funded lawyer who claimed it was unconstitutional.

In 1991 U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. ruled that the presence of the cross on public land violated the state constitution. However, the San Diego City Council pre-empted removal of the cross by selling the land to the Mt. Soledad Memorial Association, a non-profit veterans group.

A federal court subsequently found the sale of the land to the veterans group illegal, despite the fact that 76 percent of San Diego’s voters approved the sale under Proposition F in 1992. The court ruled the sale itself violated the California Constitution because it was tantamount to government support of religion.

After the first sale of the property was invalidated, the city solicited competitive bids for the property. The highest bidder was the Mt. Soledad Memorial Association. When the association took possession of the property, friends and relatives of soldiers killed in action constructed around the cross a granite memorial bearing the likenesses and stories of the fallen.

The ACLU-funded attorney appealed the second sale because of a stipulation in the terms of the sale concerning the cross. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the second sale of the land with the cross also violated the state’s law on separation of church and state.

After the city decided to remove the cross, LiMandri was instrumental in obtaining the support of area Congressmen, Duncan Hunter and Randy “Duke” Cunningham, both Republicans, who authored a bill authorizing the federal government to take over the memorial as a national war memorial provided the city donate the site to the federal government, which President Bush signed into law in December 2004.

Surprisingly, the city council voted not to donate the land to the federal government. As a result San Diegans for a Mt. Soledad National War Memorial was formed to start a petition drive requesting the city council to rescind its vote and allow the citizens to decide. In a historical first, it took only 23 days for the group to gather 105,000 signatures. In May, the city council agreed to put the measure before the citizens in the special mayoral election July 26th.

Judge John G. Roberts A Great Choice for Supreme Court Justice
Wed, Jul 20, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI — The President’s nomination of Court of Appeals Judge John G. Roberts, a solid conservative, to replace the retiring Sandra Day O’Connor, is already causing great consternation among pro-abortion groups and Liberals.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel for the Thomas More Law Center, a public interest law firm located in Ann Arbor, Michigan commented, “I applaud President Bush for keeping his promise to the American people to appoint judges who will interpret the law and not act as super legislators. Judge Roberts has an impeccable legal career. If there is going to be fight over the President’s choice for Supreme Court, this is a fight worth joining.”

Those opposing the President’s nominee, point to Robert’s legal positions in briefs he co-authored as a U. S. Deputy Solicitor General to overturn Roe v. Wade and the so-called Lemon Test dealing with prayers at high school graduations.

In Rust v. Sullivan, a case dealing with a rule prohibiting federally funded family planning clinics from discussing abortion with patients, Roberts' brief argued the “we continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled.”

In Lee v. Weisman, a case dealing with the constitutionality of prayers at high school graduations, Robert’s brief urged the court to rule that such prayers were constitutional and did not involve any coercion.

Roberts, 50, graduated from Harvard Law School in 1979 and clerked for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The following year he clerked for Justice William Rehnquist. Following his clerkship experience, Roberts served as Special Assistant to United States Attorney General William French Smith. In 1982 President Reagan appointed him to the White House Staff as Associate Counsel to the President, a position in which he served until joining the DC firm of Hogan & Hartson in 1986.

Roberts left the firm in 1989 to accept appointment as Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, a position in which he served until returning to the firm in 1993. He was appointed to a seat on the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in May 2003.

Roberts is a practicing Catholic, married with two children.

Dover School District Seeks Judgment Against ACLU In Evolution Case
Thu, Jul 14, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI — The Dover Area School District, represented by the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, filed papers with the federal court yesterday, asking the judge to rule in their favor in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU. The ACLU is challenging a recent change to the school district’s ninth-grade biology curriculum, which, in a one-minute statement, informs students that there are gaps and problems in the theory of evolution and makes students aware of intelligent design as an alternative explanation for the origins and diversification of life.

Contrary to many press accounts, the school district is not teaching intelligent design, creationism, or religious doctrine in its biology class—its policy expressly forbids that. Rather, the school district is teaching the Darwinian theory of evolution pursuant to state standards.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel for the Law Center, stated, “This minor change to Dover’s science curriculum was simply a modest step by a small-town school board to improve the science education of its students. This controversy is nothing more than a tempest in a teapot. The Founders of this country would be astonished at the thought that this simple curriculum change ‘established religion’ in violation of the Constitution that they drafted.”

In December, the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State sued the school district on behalf of several Dover area parents.

According to Robert Muise, trial counsel with the Law Center, “The ACLU has used the Establishment Clause to remove from public life anything that they perceive to be favorable to religion, including prayer, the Ten Commandments, Nativity scenes, and other symbols associated with religion. Now, they seek to employ this constitutional provision to silence criticism of the theory of evolution and to prevent students from learning about alternatives to Darwin’s theory, including preventing students from simply being told that such alternatives exist. Even the recent Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution, which tend to be hostile to religion, do not go this far.”

Thomas More Law Center Asks Federal Appeals Court To Reverse $120 Million Dollar Jury Verdict Intended to Silence Pro-Life Speech
Wed, Jul 13, 2005

PORTLAND, OR - A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments yesterday in an ongoing appeal by pro-life activists from a $120 million dollar aggregate verdict by a Portland jury in 1999. The verdict, which had been reversed by a three-judge panel in 2001 only to be reinstated by the 6-to-5 vote of an en banc panel in 2003, was based entirely on the publication of two posters and a non-party’s website (the so-called “Nuremberg Files”) alleged to be “threats” against the named abortionists in violation of FACE and RICO.

Edward L. White III, trial counsel with the Thomas More Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan conducted the oral argument on behalf of the pro-life activists. Acting co-counsel was Christopher A. Ferrara of the American Catholic Lawyers Association.

The panel focused on the question of whether the jury’s award of punitive damages, which constitutes most of the verdict could be sustained in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in State Farm v. Campbell. The court appeared concerned that the punitive damages award of $108.5 million was grossly excessive.

Also at issue are changes in the law announced by the Supreme Court in Virginia v. Black and the Supreme Court’s decision in Scheidler v. NOW, which hold that political protesters cannot be liable for “extortion” by threats under RICO unless money or other property is obtained from the alleged extortion victim.

“Under Virginia v. Black,” said Mr. White, “a threat must be specifically intended by the speaker, but the jury instructions in this case expressly rejected specific intent as the standard and told the jury that they could find a threat even if they believed no threat was intended, so long as a ‘reasonable person’ would foresee that the posters and website would be viewed as threats. We believe that the loose standard given to the jury for threats is not consistent with the First Amendment. A specific intent standard is required for adequate constitutional protection.”

“We believe that these Supreme Court decisions require a new trial on the FACE claims and dismissal of the RICO claim,” Mr. White added. “We have asked the Ninth Circuit to apply these new decisions to this case, which is still pending, even though they came down after the jury’s verdict. We believe the Court is obliged to follow these decisions and grant a new trial, since intervening Supreme Court cases apply while the appellate process is continuing.”

A decision in this nationally and internationally reported First Amendment case is expected in three to five months.

Thomas More Law Center To argue For Reversal of $120 Million Jury Verdict Against Pro-Lifers in the “Nuremberg Files” Case
Mon, Jul 11, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI — On Tuesday, July 12th, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Portland, Oregon, will hear oral arguments in the so-called “Nuremberg Files” case, which many consider to be one of the most important First Amendment cases in the country. The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor Michigan, represents several pro-life advocates who were hit with a $120 million jury verdict in 1999. The case against the defendants was primarily based on their use of “wanted” posters specifically naming abortion providers.

The Law Center represents six of the fourteen pro-life defendants. The American Catholic Lawyers Association represents the remaining defendants. Edward L. White III, trial counsel with the Thomas More Law Center, will present the argument on behalf of all defendants.

According to White, “We are hopeful the Ninth Circuit will apply the new Supreme Court cases to defendants’ situation. These new cases require the reversal of the jury’s verdict in this case.”

After the 1999 jury verdict, an appeal was taken to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and in 2001 a unanimous three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit set aside the verdict and injunction because the defendants’ speech was protected by the First Amendment. The unanimous decision, however, was overturned in 2002 by a sharply divided eleven-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, who voted six to five in the case, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review their decision.

However, since their initial refusal to grant a review of the case, United States Supreme Court has issued at least two opinions, which the Law Center believes, require a reversal or at least a new trial. The Supreme Court has now made it clear that for a defendant to be found guilty of making a threat, a jury must determine that the defendant made the threat with specific intent to commit violence. In the defendants’ case, however, the jury was told that it did not have to find specific intent, which is contrary to the new Supreme Court case law.

Also, the Supreme Court has now made it clear that for a pro-lifer to be found guilty of “extortion” under RICO, the pro-lifer must obtain property from an abortion provider. With regard to the defendants, there was no evidence that they had obtained any property from the abortion providers, yet the abortion providers were still awarded more than $11 million based on their RICO claims, which is contrary to the new Supreme Court case law.

Supreme Court Justice O’Connor Resigns - The Battle to Restore America’s Religious and Moral Foundations Begins
Fri, Jul 1, 2005

ANN ARBOR, MI — Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in a surprising announcement today, has formally offered her resignation from the Supreme Court. O’Connor, 75, has been the center of much scrutiny and criticism for her role as a swing vote on key moral issues.

Richard Thompson, President & Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center stated, ”This is an opportunity to take back our Constitution from the ACLU. This is an opportunity for our nation to restore the religious and moral values that were lost during decades of judicial activism by the Supreme Court. ”

Continued Thompson, “The liberals have already promised ‘a take no prisoners’ fight if the President’s nominee doesn’t pass their litmus test. Let the battle begin.”

The resignation presents President Bush with his first opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court Justice. O’Connor, appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, was originally seen as a justice who would uphold conservative values but quickly developed a reputation for siding with her liberal colleagues on the Court. She has been the swing vote on cases upholding the right to abortion, striking homosexual sodomy, and the most recent ruling against the public display of the Ten Commandments.

O’Connor, served on the court for twenty-four years and was the first woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court. She stated in her letter to President Bush, "This is to inform you of my decision to retire from my position as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor.”

Concluded Thompson, “Justice O’Connor has been a public servant to our nation for twenty-four years. The Law Center wishes Justice O’Connor and her family well in their future endeavors.”