In fact, one
consistency among the Dover School Board
members’
testimony, which was marked by selective memories and outright
lies
under oath, as will be discussed in more detail below, is that they did
not think they needed to be knowledgeable about ID because it was not
being taught to the students. We disagree. (note
7, page 46)
Bonsell repeatedly failed to testify in a truthful manner. p. 97
[Buckingham's] otherwise largely inconsistent and non-credible
testimony. p. 102
As we will discuss in more detail below, the inescapable truth is that
both Bonsell and Buckingham
lied
at their January 3, 2005 depositions about
their knowledge of the source of the donation for Pandas, which likely
contributed to Plaintiffs’ election not to seek a temporary
restraining
order at that time based upon a conflicting and incomplete factual
record. This
mendacity
was a
clear and deliberate attempt to hide the source of the donations by the
Board
President and the Chair of the Curriculum Committee to further ensure
that Dover
students received a creationist alternative to Darwin’s
theory of
evolution. We are accordingly presented with further
compelling evidence that
Bonsell
and Buckingham
sought
to conceal the blatantly religious purpose behind the ID Policy.
p. 115
Finally, the Board
brazenly
chose not to follow the advice of their only science-education
resources as the teachers were not included in the process of
drafting the language adopted by the Board Curriculum Committee. p. 118
One unfortunate theme in this case is the
striking ignorance
concerning the concept of ID amongst Board members.
Conspicuously, Board members who voted for the curriculum change
testified at trial that
they had utterly no grasp of ID. p. 121
The testimony of Joel Leib, whose family has lived in Dover for
generations, is representative of the Plaintiffs’ harm caused
by
the Board’s actions in enacting the ID Policy.
Well, it’s
driven a wedge where there hasn’t been a
wedge before. People are afraid to talk to people for fear,
and that’s happened to me. They’re afraid
to talk to me
because I’m on the wrong side of the fence.
17:146-47 (Leib).
Moreover, Board members and teachers opposing the curriculum change and
its implementation have been confronted directly. First,
Casey
Brown testified that following her opposition to the curriculum change
on October 18, 2004, Buckingham called her an atheist and Bonsell told
her that she would go to hell.
Second, Angie Yingling
was
coerced into voting for the curriculum change by Board members accusing
her of being an atheist and un- Christian. In addition, both Bryan Rehm and Fred Callahan
have
been confronted in similarly hostile ways, as have teachers in the
DASD. pp. 129-130
Although Defendants attempt to persuade this Court that each Board
member who voted for the biology curriculum change did so for the
secular purposed of improving science education and to exercise
critical
thinking skills, their contentions are simply irreconcilable with the
record
evidence. Their asserted purposes are a
sham,
and they are accordingly unavailing, for the reasons that follow. p. 130
Moreover, Defendants’ asserted secular purpose of improving
science education is
belied
by the fact that most if not all of the Board members who voted in
favor
of the biology curriculum change conceded that they still do not know,
nor have they
ever known, precisely what ID is. To assert a secular purpose
against
this backdrop is
ludicrous.
p. 131
Finally, although Defendants have unceasingly attempted in vain to
distance themselves from their own actions and statements, which
culminated in
repetitious,
untruthful
testimony, such a strategy constitutes additional strong
evidence of improper purpose under the first prong of the Lemon
test. As
exhaustively detailed herein, the thought leaders on the Board made it
their considered
purpose to inject some form of creationism into the science classrooms,
and by the dint
of their personalities and persistence they were able to pull the
majority of
the Board along in their collective wake. p. 131
Any asserted secular purposes by the Board are a
sham and are merely
secondary to a religious objective. McCreary, 125 S. Ct. at
2735; accord, e.g., Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 308 (“it is . . .
the duty of the
courts to ‘distinguish a sham secular purpose from a sincere
one.’” (citation
omitted)); Edwards, 482 U.S. at 586-87 (“While the Court is
normally deferential to a
State’s articulation of a secular purpose, it is required
that the statement of such purpose be
sincere and not a sham.”). Defendants’
previously
referenced
flagrant and
insulting falsehoods to the Court provide sufficient and
compelling evidence for us to deduce
that any allegedly secular purposes that have been offered in support
of the ID
Policy are equally insincere. Accordingly, we find that the
secular purposes claimed by the Board
amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was
to
promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the
Establishment
Clause. 132
The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the
Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several
of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their
religious convictions in
public, would time and again
lie
to
cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID
Policy. p. 137
Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product
of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is
manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the
result of the activism of an
ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public
interest law firm eager
to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the
Board to
adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy.
The
breathtaking inanity
of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against
the
factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this
trial. The students,
parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better
than to be dragged
into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary
and personal
resources.
p. 137-8