UC Lawsuit
stcynic | October 31, 2006The Sacramento Bee has an article about the upcoming trial over the University of California's rejection of certain courses from a Christian school for credit in their admissions process. I reviewed the biology textbook when the suit was first filed and there is no question that it should be rejected for credit by any serious school. You cannot pretend to seriously be teaching science when you claim, without evidence, that virtually everything taught in modern science is wrong and that anything that conflicts with their interpretation of the Bible must be wrong regardless of the evidence. It…
stcynic | August 9, 2006As expected, the judge in the ACSI lawsuit against the University of California rejected the UC's motion to dismiss and ruled that the case will go to trial. I don't have a copy of the ruling yet, but I hope to have one soon. This is the case where a group of Christian schools is suing the UC because they will not grant credit in the admissions process for a few of their courses. The ACSI claims this violates their free speech and free exercise rights, while the UC says that they have the right to set admissions standards and determine which courses meet those standards and which don't.…
stcynic | January 19, 2006USA Today has an article about the ACSI lawsuit against the University of California system over the lack of accreditation for a few of their courses. Despite rhetoric from the ACSI about the UC discriminating against Christians and trying to keep kids from Christians schools from attending their colleges, the article notes:
UC has certified 43 Calvary Chapel courses and has admitted 24 of the 32 applicants from the high school in the past four years, Patti says.
They have objected to only a few courses that don't fit their criteria, they've certified 43 other courses from the school, and…
stcynic | January 19, 2006Just noticed this article, about a month old now, about the ACSI lawsuit against the UC. It contains one statement that jumped out at me. Wendell Bird is the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the case. He's a young earth creationist who was affiliated with the Institute for Creation Research and who wrote the model policy that was later ruled out of public schools regarding creationism in public schools. Here's the statement:
In 1978, when he was a law student studying under Robert Bork -- whose rejected nomination to the Supreme Court was an early battle in the culture wars -- Bird…
stcynic | December 20, 2005The Economist has an article on the UC lawsuit available on their website. They tie tha suit together with Dover and Cupertino:
So far the UC case has had less publicity than the argument about whether high schools can teach "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution (currently being fought out in a courtroom in Pennsylvania) or even a ferocious dispute up in Cupertino, where a history teacher claims he was restrained from teaching about Christianity's role in American history (parents had complained that he was acting more like an evangelical preacher). In fact, all these arguments…
stcynic | December 2, 2005I still havent' been able to find a copy of the University of California's response brief or their motion to dismiss the ACSI lawsuit, but the ACSI has made the original complaint and their response brief to the motion to dismiss available on their website. I haven't had a chance to go over the reply brief in any detail, but one of their arguments near the beginning jumped out at me. They're arguing "viewpoint discrimination" not merely because the UC has rejected certain courses, but even because of their requirement that the student have taken a certain number of credit courses during high…
stcynic | November 30, 2005For those looking for more information on the lawsuit between the Association of Christian Schools International and the UC system over approval of their courses, Liz Ditz wrote a pretty thorough review of the situation back in August.
stcynic | November 29, 2005The lawsuit between the Association of Christian Schools International, Calvary Chapel Christian School and the University of California system over the UC's refusal to give credit for certain courses taught in Christian schools is going to trial on December 12th, according to the New York Times. I would like to follow that trial nearly as closely as I did the Dover trial, but I don't know anyone involved in it the way I did in Dover. I'm looking for either a public webpage that has the briefs, motions and even depositions and transcripts (when they are available) posted to it, or someone…
stcynic | October 13, 2005I'm sure most of my regular readers remember the lawsuit filed against the University of California system (see here, here and here) because they won't give credit for certain classes used by some Christian schools in that state that don't meet their academic requirements. The San Jose Mercury News had an excellent editorial on the subject last week that I forgot to mention here. Despite the inflated rhetoric about religious freedom being thrown around by the plaintiffs, the News wasn't fooled as to the real issue:
The suit appears to be baseless -- a case of substandard academics hiding…
stcynic | August 31, 2005One of the most fascinating things about the lawsuit against the UC is that they appear to have pulled the legal arguments out of thin air. For instance, the ACSI states in their newsletter:
ACSI seeks to preserve the right of Christian school graduates to attend the college or university of their choice.
I can't imagine what makes them think that anyone, Christian or otherwise, has a right to attend the college or university of their choice. When I was turned down as a transfer student to the University of Chicago, I wasn't happy about it, but I certainly didn't think my rights had been…
stcynic | August 31, 2005In reading the complaint against UC, there are some interesting things to discover. Here's an interesting item it contains. The plaintiffs allege that UC is official state board of education policy by requiring students to believe in evolution:
Furthermore, the State of California has agreed that in public and private schools, students do not have to accept everything that is taught, and cannot be required to hold a state-prescribed viewpoint:
Nothing In science or in any other field of knowledge shall be taught dogmatically. Dogma is a system of beliefs that is not subject to scientific test…
stcynic | August 30, 2005Mike Dunford has some follow up information on the UC lawsuit, including a link to the actual complaint filed in court. He offers a few choice excerpts from that complaint along with some analysis. This part is particularly on-point, I think:
"Content discrimination". What a wonderful phrase. It makes it sound like there is somehow something wrong with evaluating the worth of courses based on the material that is being taught. I wonder what comes after this. The next step doesn't even need to be from one of these creationist groups. Instead, it could be a homeopath suing a state medical board…