A group of parents in the small Tehachapi mountain community of Lebec on Tuesday filed the first lawsuit challenging the teaching of "intelligent design" in a California public school.
The suit targets what appears to be the latest wrinkle in the continuing national fight between supporters and opponents of teaching evolution in public schools -- a course that says it examines the debate as an issue of "philosophy."
Supporters of intelligent design lost a court fight in Pennsylvania last month that both sides had seen as a test case. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III rejected the Dover, Pa., school board's decision to teach intelligent design as part of a science course, ruling that design was "an interesting theological argument, but ... not science."
In this case, the parents say in their suit that school officials in Lebec -- a town of about 1,300 just west of Interstate 5 in Kern County and about 63 miles north of Los Angeles -- designed their course as a way of getting around that decision.
At a special meeting of the El Tejon Unified School District on Jan. 1, at which the board approved the new course, "Philosophy of Design," school Supt. John W. Wight said that he had consulted the school district's attorneys and that they "had told him that as long as the course was called 'philosophy,' " it could pass legal muster, according to the lawsuit.
The board approved the course 3 to 2.
A woman who identified herself as a secretary at the school district said Tuesday that Wight was out of town and unavailable for comment and that no one else was authorized to comment on the suit.
In a Jan. 6 letter to lawyers who challenged the class, Wight wrote that "our legal advisors have pointed out they are unaware of any court or California statute which has forbidden public schools to explore cultural phenomena, including history, religion or creation myths."
He added that he would "promptly intervene if anyone should stray into teaching or advocating the tenets of any religion or creed, including intelligent design."
But the plaintiffs argue that the school district has no intention of setting up an open debate on comparative religion or competing philosophies.
